---
title: "Disney to Pay $60 Million a Year for 66 Character.AI Workers as the Startup Sits in Bankruptcy"
description: "The offer works out to $909,000 a head annually, lands weeks after Disney’s third layoff round, and accompanies a $20 million stalking-horse bid for the startup’s assets"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-16T15:01:35Z
modified: 2026-10-16T18:33:36Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/disney-to-pay-60-million-a-year-for-66-character-ai-workers--6880ed
language: en
tags: ["ai", "layoffs", "character-ai", "disney", "bankruptcy", "tech", "business"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Disney to Pay $60 Million a Year for 66 Character.AI Workers as the Startup Sits in Bankruptcy

*The offer works out to $909,000 a head annually, lands weeks after Disney’s third layoff round, and accompanies a $20 million stalking-horse bid for the startup’s assets*

By Luis Goa · October 16, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/disney-to-pay-60-million-a-year-for-66-character-ai-workers--6880ed

## In brief

- Disney will pay $60 million a year to 66 Character.AI staffers plus a $30 million retention pool, per a bankruptcy filing
- Character.AI filed Chapter 11 after child-safety lawsuits; it and backer Google settled several suits earlier this year
- Disney also bid $20 million for the startup’s IP and tech; competing offers are due November 20 under court oversight
- The hires follow Disney’s third major layoff round since CEO Josh D’Amaro took office, which cut several hundred workers
- 56 of the 66 offered staffers have already resigned from Character.AI; 10 await U.S. work-visa updates

Sixty-six hires at $60 million a year works out to roughly $909,000 per employee annually, before Disney adds a $30 million “aggregate retention pool” to keep them. That is the price Disney has agreed to pay for 66 staffers of Character.AI, the AI chatbot startup whose parent company filed for Chapter 11, according to [a Tuesday bankruptcy filing reported by James Faris at Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-pays-60-million-characterai-employees-tech-layoffs-karandeep-anand-2026-10). The filing also says Disney expects to spend $180 million on “total compensation and retention” for these workers over the next three years. The arithmetic there deserves a note: three years at $60 million is exactly $180 million, so either the $30 million retention pool sits inside that envelope or the total is understated, and the filing as reported does not say which.

Character.AI filed for bankruptcy after families sued the company, alleging their teenagers harmed themselves or died by suicide after using its custom AI chatbots. The startup and Google, one of its backers, settled several child-safety lawsuits earlier this year. In its bankruptcy announcement, the company cited “significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwinds.” Earlier reporting from the filings showed compute running 45 percent of the startup’s spending, and that the chat histories of 163 million current and past users [are excluded from Disney’s asset purchase and stay with the court](https://rews.cc/a/character-ai-s-bankruptcy-filing-shows-the-chatbot-math-neve-520da1).

![A yellow horseshoe magnet attracts cream-colored human figures from a shattered dark blue speech bubble against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/6f29a71fdc3977d0428e82e0d3a317d05f043dd6.webp)

## What Disney is buying

Beyond the payroll, Disney agreed to pay $20 million for Character.AI’s key assets, including some of its IP and technology. That bid functions as a floor: other companies can submit competing offers until November 20, and a bankruptcy court judge will oversee whichever outcome emerges. Disney did not respond to requests for comment.

The employee side of the transaction is already substantially executed. In mid-September, Disney hired Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand to be its first-ever company-wide technology chief; his compensation has not been disclosed. Of the 66 Character.AI staffers Disney offered jobs, 56 have already resigned from the startup. The remaining 10 are waiting for the U.S. government to update their work visas. The effect is that Disney absorbs the team while the legal entity that employed them finishes dying in court.

Entertainment lawyer Corey Martin of Granderson Des Rochers, who advises companies on media transactions and did not work on this deal, told Business Insider the compensation figures do not surprise him, because the employees are Character.AI’s largest asset.

> They’re highly compensated employees. The numbers can be eye-popping, but it’s not that unusual in this space.

![An open cream-colored case holds three stylized figures in white suits with gold circular heads against a bright blue background.](https://rews.cc/img/dabf57c9d0f99656f29ce82447a5b54609a00fa2.webp)

## The timing

The hires land two weeks after Disney laid off several hundred workers, including some technology employees, in late September. That was the company’s third major layoff round since Josh D’Amaro took over as CEO in mid-March. The Character.AI additions are part of the AI strategy D’Amaro is pursuing to revive a stock that has gained less than 2 percent over the last 12 months and lost more than 36 percent over the last five years — a performance baseline against which $180 million for 66 people looks less like staffing and more like a bet that the talent, measured per head, outperforms the asset.

Disney and Character.AI also share a small legal history. Last fall, Disney sent the startup a cease-and-desist letter instructing it not to build chatbots featuring Disney’s copyrighted characters without permission. Character.AI complied, removing chatbots based on franchises like Star Wars and Marvel. The characters Disney went to court to protect will now, presumably, be built into chatbots by the people it removed from that startup, this time under licence.

Anand told Disney employees in a memo last Friday that the company was “uniquely positioned to win” in a media business he called “at an inflection point.” He added: “What stands out most is the talent and care this team puts into its work, the craft Disney has perfected, and the strong foundation you’ve built.”

The next numbers arrive November 20, the deadline for competing bids on Character.AI’s assets, and whenever Disney finally discloses what it is paying the man who used to run the company it is disassembling.