Disney to Hire Over 60 Character.AI Employees With $180M in First-Three-Year Pay

Disney has agreed to hire more than 60 employees of Character.AI, a chatbot platform powered by large language models, and will pay them roughly $180 million in total compensation over the first three years, according to bankruptcy reorganization filings.

Character.AI, which has about 86 employees, filed for voluntary bankruptcy on October 12 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. As part of the restructuring, it plans to license certain intellectual property to Disney for $20 million. The hiring agreement covers most of the company's staff, with an additional $30 million set aside as retention bonuses, partly payable at the first and second anniversaries of the deal's closing.

The move follows Disney's recruitment of Character.AI's former CEO Karandeep Anand weeks earlier, as part of a broader technology licensing arrangement that gives Disney the right to use the AI company's core technology. The agreement still requires approval from the bankruptcy judge, but it offers a key lifeline to the struggling team, which Character.AI said had faced extremely low morale and was on the verge of mass departure.