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Disney Agrees To Pay $60 Million Annually For 66 Character.AI Employees
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Disney will pay $60 million annually to hire 66 Character.AI staff. The three-year commitment totals about $180 million.
7 outlets told this the same way.
Disney buys Character.AI talent
Disney agreed to pay $60 million a year for 66 Character.AI employees, according to a Chapter 11 filing by Character.AI’s parent company.
Disney also set aside $30 million for an "aggregate retention pool," and the filing said it expects to spend $180 million on compensation and retention over three years.
Disney agreed to pay $20 million for key assets, including some IP and technology, and the company is the stalking-horse bidder with competing bids due Nov. 20.
Disney hired Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand in mid-September as its first company-wide tech chief, and the move followed Disney laying off several hundred workers, including some tech staff, two weeks earlier.
Stalking-horse auction details
Disney’s bidding motion described the offer as a stalking-horse bid that sets a floor price while other parties submit competing proposals. The filings described two purchases with very different price tags, with Disney budgeting about nine times as much for the people as for the technology.
Disney’s license covers the code behind Character.AI's training, safety and serving systems, nine patents and certain claims, while it excludes the app, the brand, its domains, user data and chats, training data and finished models. Character.AI said it expects to keep operating through the sale process, but warned that the platform will be wound down if no buyer agrees to continue it.
Why the deal matters
Disney’s Character.AI hires arrive after Character.AI filed for voluntary bankruptcy protection on October 12, and the company had been losing approximately $8 million to $9 million per month despite retaining roughly 12 million users. Disney’s personnel deal also reflects the litigation and regulatory pressure on Character.AI, including lawsuits from families who alleged their teenagers harmed themselves or died by suicide after using its chatbots.
Character.AI and Google settled several child safety cases earlier this year, and Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter last fall over unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters. Entertainment lawyer Corey Martin said the pay figures are not surprising because Character.AI’s employees are its biggest asset, calling them "highly compensated employees".