alt Hacker NewsThis seems reductive. Character.ai has > 20 million monthly active users, and a lot of company valuation happens on the basis of user count (which is legitimate, that's not vaporware)
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I have the impression that if MAU by itself was sufficient, the company wouldn’t have had to file for bankruptcy.
Obviously the company failed to convert its MAU into paying users, despite the fact the token costs greatly declined over the last years.
I disagree that it's reductive. If each user costs more in API tokens then your company isn't valuable. That's what everyone's been screaming from the rooftops about there being a bubble. We certainly use tons of AI at the company I work for, if we were paying full API prices then I would bet we'd be barely using it.
As we saw after the hero Zelenskyy took down Yandex data centers, user count seems to be vaporware in many cases.
A drug dealer at the corner also has lots of active monthly users.
If you set fire to a stack of money and some folks warm themselves by it, was that creating value?