Character.ai vs Scale AI: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Character.ai had $50M of annual revenue in FY2025. Scale AI had $870M (unaudited) of annual revenue in FY2024.
Latest financial snapshot
Character.ai
- Latest annual revenue
- $50M (FY2025)
- Net income
- Unavailable here
- Net margin
- —
- Revenue growth
- —
Scale AI
- Latest annual revenue
- $870M (unaudited) (FY2024)
- Net income
- Unavailable here
- Net margin
- —
- Revenue growth
- —
Financial summary
Character.ai
Character.ai is private and discloses little. Known figures: a $43 million seed round, a $150 million Series A in March 2023 at a $1 billion valuation (about $193 million raised in total), and the August 2024 Google transaction, reported at about $2.7 billion, which bought out investors at a price implying a valuation of roughly $2.5 billion. The company said in 2025 that revenue was running above $30 million a year. Third-party estimates, such as $32.2 million for 2024 from app-market trackers, are unaudited. Profitability and cash balance have not been disclosed.
Scale AI
Scale is private and does not publish audited results. Bloomberg reported about $870 million of revenue in 2024 and a target near $2 billion for 2025 before the Meta deal. After OpenAI and Google pulled back, that target looked out of reach, but CEO Jason Droege wrote in early 2026 that 2025 was Scale's biggest revenue year, with more than $1 billion in new business and nearly half of bookings in Q4. The company valued itself at more than $29 billion in the June 2025 Meta transaction, up from $13.8 billion in its May 2024 Series F. Net income has not been disclosed, though Scale says the data business is now profitable. Scale AI is an absolute powerhouse in the artificial intelligence infrastructure sector, providing massive data labeling and RLHF services with a private market valuation of approximately $13.8 billion.
Revenue and profit by year
Character.ai
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $50M | — | — | — | Source |
| FY2024 run-rate | $32.2M | — | — | — | Source |
| FY2023 run-rate | $15.2M | — | — | — | Source |
Scale AI
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 (unaudited) | $870M | — | — | — | Source |
| FY2023 | $335M | — | — | — | Source |
| FY2022 (unaudited) | $290M | — | — | — | Source |
Where the revenue comes from
Character.ai
No segment breakdown is published.
Scale AI
- Data business
Not disclosed
Training data, RL environments, robotics data and evaluations for AI labs and large technology companies; profitable since the second half of 2025, per the company.
- Applications: enterprise
Not disclosed
Generative AI applications for companies such as Mayo Clinic, BP and Allianz.
- Applications: public sector
Not disclosed
AI programs for the U.S. Department of War and international governments including Qatar, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Business model and strategy
Character.ai
How it makes money
Character.ai is a freemium consumer app. Creating characters and chatting with them is free, and the company earns money in two ways. The first is c.ai+, a subscription launched in May 2023 at $9.99 a month. Subscribers get priority access when servers are busy, faster replies, longer memory and early access to features.
Growth strategy
Since June 2025 CEO Karandeep Anand has moved Character.ai from the founders' goal of personalised superintelligence to AI entertainment. The plan has three parts: build on open-source models instead of training its own frontier models; widen the product from one-to-one chat to a social feed, Scenes, Streams, AvatarFX video and Stories;
Competitive advantage
Character.ai's edge is its library of user-made characters and the habits of the community that built it. Millions of characters exist on the platform, created and refined by users for free, and in 2025 the company said people spent about 75 minutes a day in the app. General assistants can role-play, but they do not offer a catalogue of ready-made personas with their own followings.
Scale AI
How it makes money
Scale AI earns money in two ways. Its data business charges AI labs and large technology companies for training data, reinforcement learning environments and model evaluations, produced by software pipelines plus a paid contributor network run through Outlier and Remotasks; the company says it has paid contributors more than $1 billion over ten years.
Growth strategy
Scale's 2026 plan, as described by its leadership, is to move technical capabilities from the data business into applications faster, invest in a unified AI-native platform for enterprise and government customers, and expand abroad. It opened or grew offices in New York, London, Washington, D.C., Doha, St.
Competitive advantage
Scale's advantages are scale, track record and government access. It has applied what it calls 15 billion human decisions to train leading models across 150 languages and locales, it runs SEAL benchmarks such as Humanity's Last Exam and SWE-Bench Pro that labs cite at launch, and it holds U.S.
Questions about Character.ai vs Scale AI
Which company has higher revenue — Character.ai or Scale AI, Inc.?
Character.ai had $50.0M (FY2025), while Scale AI, Inc. had $870.0M (unaudited) (FY2024). By latest annual revenue, Scale AI, Inc. is the larger business, with Character.ai showing a smaller revenue base. Note: these are from different fiscal years and are not a direct like-for-like comparison.
How does revenue per employee compare for Character.ai and Scale AI, Inc.?
Character.ai has $385k / employee in revenue per employee, while Scale AI, Inc. has $725k / employee. Headcounts may use different dates, so the ratio alone does not establish which business operates more efficiently.
How do Character.ai and Scale AI, Inc. make money?
Character.ai and Scale AI, Inc. generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Character.ai: Character.ai is a freemium consumer app. Scale AI, Inc.: Scale AI earns money in two ways.
Is Character.ai bigger than Scale AI, Inc.?
By last reported revenue, Scale AI, Inc. ($870.0M (unaudited) (FY2024)) is the larger company compared to Character.ai ($50.0M (FY2025)). Revenue scale is one dimension of size — market capitalisation, employee count, and geographic reach are also relevant depending on the context.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Character.ai vs Scale AI overview