one year on
Google rehires Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer in licensing deal
The reverse-acquihire lets Google regain a key machine-learning researcher and avoid a full acquisition, as regulators sharpen scrutiny of similar deal structures.
Google is bringing Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas back into the fold, licensing Character.AI’s technology and re-hiring its co-founders along with a handful of employees. Shazeer led the LaMDA team during his previous Google tenure, left in 2021 to found the a16z-backed chatbot startup. He will join Google DeepMind’s research team; De Freitas and other departing staff will follow. Dominic Perella, Character.AI’s general counsel, steps in as interim CEO, and the company says most employees will stay on.
The deal is one of the so-called “reverse acqui-hires” drawing regulatory scrutiny, a structure that allows big tech companies to absorb startup talent without a full acquisition that would trigger antitrust review. Regulators are already circling: the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority recently opened an inquiry into the Microsoft-Inflection deal, and the FTC launched a similar investigation in June.
Shazeer said in a statement that he is “super excited to return to Google and work as part of the Google DeepMind team” and that the licensing funds position Character.AI for continued success. A Google spokesperson emphasized that the agreement provides “increased funding for Character.AI to continue growing.” The startup noted that the availability of many third-party LLMs now allows it to focus more on post-training and product experiences.
The record
The reporter notes the deal follows the pattern of Microsoft's Inflection and Amazon's Adept arrangements, drawing regulatory attention from the FTC and UK CMA.
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
The deal closed without formal antitrust challenge, though the FTC later issued requests for information on similar arrangements. Character.AI's remaining team continued operating the consumer chatbot platform under new leadership. Shazeer's return to DeepMind raised eyebrows given his previous frustration with Google's slow deployment of LaMDA.