AI Inventors

Daniel De Freitas - Co-founder of Character.AI

By Kamal Kashyap • Jul 02, 2026
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Daniel De Freitas is a Brazilian-American software engineer. He co-created Google's LaMDA model and co-founded Character.AI.

Introduction

Daniel De Freitas is a software engineer who specializes in conversational AI agents. He co-founded Character.AI after developing pioneering chatbot models at Google.

Google Brain & Meena

While at Google Brain, De Freitas initiated the "Meena" chatbot project in his spare time. Meena evolved into LaMDA, Google's flagship conversational model, demonstrating human-like chat capabilities.

Character.AI

De Freitas co-founded Character.AI in 2021 with Noam Shazeer to build personalized conversational agents, serving as President. In 2024, he rejoined Google as part of a licensing transaction.

Daniel De Freitas
Daniel De Freitas
Daniel De Freitas
Company Google / Character.AI
Country Brazil
Born February 12, 1989 (age 37)
São Paulo, Brazil
Education Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Notable work LaMDA, Meena Chatbot, Character.AI
Title Co-founder of Character.AI

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