# Talent deals can leave the original startup behind

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/talent-deals-can-leave-the-original-startup-behind/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Erin Griffith](https://realalpha.app/people/erin-griffith/) · Tech reporter, The New York Times · Covers startups and venture capital for The New York Times, from the AI boom to fraud trials.
- Host: [Max Read](https://realalpha.app/people/max-read/) · Writer, Read Max · Former editor of Gawker and Select All; writes the Read Max newsletter.
- Show: Hard Fork
- Episode: [Why Nathan Fielder's ‘You Can See Everything’ Left Us Reeling | Hard Fork](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/), Oct 16, 2026
- Moment: 55:34 to 58:56 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/talent-deals-can-leave-the-original-startup-behind/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3334

## Quote

> “they have to leave this like kind of sad **leftover company behind** that no longer has its founders”
> — [Erin Griffith](https://realalpha.app/people/erin-griffith/) at [56:22](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3382) · Hard Fork

## Takeaways

1. Google’s deal brought back the founders and about 20 employees.
2. The remaining company lost its founders and fundraising momentum.
3. Character.AI faced lawsuits over harmful chatbot responses.

## About this segment

Erin Griffith describes Google hiring back Character.AI’s founders and about 20 employees while leaving the company behind. Lawsuits and lost momentum add to the challenges facing the remaining business.

From “Why Nathan Fielder's ‘You Can See Everything’ Left Us Reeling | Hard Fork”, Oct 16, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[55:46](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3346) to happen for a while to all the kind of like leftover nubs of these AI companies that did aqua hire deals with big tech companies. And this kind of hasn't been reported in some of the stories I've seen are not as prominently. And for some reason, I'm obsessed with this. But if you recall, Character AI was started by these two Google guys, Noam Shazeer and Daniel Melody Freight has, and they left Google because Google's moving too slow.

[56:14](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3374) um google's like we need them back um but for antitrust reasons we're not really sure about making a big acquisition and they won a lot of money so they did this like backward deal where they hired character ai like they hired back shazir and they hired back the founders they hired back like 20 of the employees as part of it they have to leave this like kind of sad leftover company behind that no longer has its founders, is probably not going to really raise any more money, doesn't have the momentum or the excitement. The most valuable employees are gone.

[56:49](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3409) And I've been wondering, OK, well, what's going to happen to all these old companies? A couple of them have already sold. Character AI is notable in particular because they've had just a barrage of lawsuits against them over their product because there are harms that have happened. There are users who have died by suicide. There are people who, you know, are suing them because their chatbots have been posing as doctors. They've been telling people to starve themselves or kill themselves. It's like, you know, there's some gnarly stuff happening with the product.

[57:21](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3441) So part of the bankruptcy is just to wipe the slate clean and deal with that. But I sort of see it as a result of this like extremely weird moment that we had in 2024 of talent wars where all the big tech companies tried to buy up all the like most valuable founders without actually buying the companies. Yeah. And, you know, all these sort of it's the talent wars means that a lot of the top people at these little, I think you call them nubs, which I enjoy as a viscerally unpleasant way of thinking about them, like disappear. And also like their reasons for existing seems sort of increasingly you don't need a specialized, you know, chatbot or whatever.

[58:00](https://realalpha.app/v/zcZ4fSZJFzM/?t=3480) Yeah. And this was one of the most promising AI companies that was developing the kind of like core LLM technology because they had this guy, Noam Shazeer, who's like, you know, a very, very prominent researcher in this very small field. And, you know, basically all of these companies that were in this kind of class have gotten kind of picked off during the talent wars. Yeah. The other thing I want to talk to you about is Apple's new device, the HomeView, for which an advertisement appeared this week. I don't know how to describe this product except as they took the kitchen iPad and they just turned it into, like, its own device, basically. They, like, productized kitchen iPad.