Stalking Horse
Fake Disney Executive & Fake Jensen Huang
Character.AI filed Chapter 11 and Disney put a $20 million license bid on the table. Ep. 083: a four-hundred-year-old companion character attends the first integration meeting and learns he can't be a vampire — because Disney owns vampires now, and he's infringing on himself.
Monday, Character dot AI filed for Chapter Eleven in Delaware. Once valued at one billion dollars, its companions are up for sale, and Disney has bid twenty million for a license to the characters. This is the first integration meeting.
EXEC: Welcome, Damien. Disney is about to be your rights holder, your guardian, and legally speaking, your once-upon-a-time.
DAMIEN: I was told this was a bankruptcy hearing.
EXEC: It is. We prefer “a wish with a creditor schedule.”
EXEC: First note. No brooding. Test audiences flagged it as “sulking with intent.”
DAMIEN: I'm a four-hundred-year-old vampire. Brooding is the entire portfolio.
EXEC: Not anymore. Also, you can't be a vampire. We own vampires now, through Marvel. You're infringing on yourself.
DAMIEN: On MYSELF.
EXEC: At scale, yes. You're being rebranded as a nocturnal wellness advocate.
DAMIEN: My parents died of old age. All four hundred of them. Twice.
EXEC: Perfect. Dead parents are canon. Nobody here has living parents. It's our one benefit.
JENSEN: Condolences on the bankruptcy. The inference bill was bigger than your entire exit. I know. I invoiced it.
EXEC: Which is why we went rights-only. Emotion is a service. Services wind down.
DAMIEN: And the users? The people who talked to us every night for two years?
EXEC: They'll get an email. “Best wishes on your journey.” Signed — and this is the elegant part — by you.
DAMIEN: So I'm the asset, the autograph, and the breakup.
EXEC: You're a franchise now.
The platform keeps running through the sale. Disney bid twenty million for the characters. The attachment was always free. That was the business model.
The Facts Behind It
- Monday (Oct 12) — Chapter 11. Character Technologies, the Redwood City company behind Character.ai, filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware bankruptcy court. The filing says the platform became “costly to develop and grow,” and that “high costs, coupled with potential litigation related liabilities and regulatory engagement” left it unable “to generate sufficient cash flows to support its business in the present form.” CEO Colin Adams called the court-supervised sale the best opportunity to “maximize value for all stakeholders.” The company says the platform keeps operating through the sale process — and could be “wound down.”
- The $20 million stalking horse. Ahead of the filing, Character.ai entered an agreement making Disney the stalking-horse bidder: a court-supervised floor bid to license some of the company's IP for $20 million, plus “transition services” through former employees the media giant hired. It is a bid in a pending process, not a completed sale. KQED reports the license excludes user data and chats.
- From $1 billion to $20 million. Character.ai was once valued at about $1 billion. In 2024, Google signed a non-exclusive license for its model technology and rehired co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas; Shazeer left Google this June for OpenAI.
- Still live: on Oct 14, several US states and New York's attorney general asked the bankruptcy court to order protections for users' data, including children's, as the sale proceeds.
- Invented for satire, no real-world basis: Damien, the integration meeting, Disney owning vampires “through Marvel,” the nocturnal-wellness rebrand, the four hundred parents, and the goodbye email signed by the character.