# Daniel De Freitas

> Brazilian engineer and Character.AI co-founder Daniel De Freitas developed conversational AI work at Google, including Meena and LaMDA, before taking an open-ended character platform to the public with Noam Shazeer. He returned to Google DeepMind in 2024.

- **Role:** Research Scientist / Technical Leader at Google DeepMind
- **Organizations:** Google DeepMind, Character.AI, Google, Microsoft
- **Nationality:** Brazilian
- **Education:** Computer Engineering, University of São Paulo, Escola Politécnica
- **Known for:** Led development of Google conversational models Meena and LaMDA., Co-authored the Meena and LaMDA research papers., Co-founded Character.AI and served as its president.

## Career timeline

- **1990s** — At age nine, built an early chatbot while learning to code in Brazil.
- **2007-2011** — Studied computer engineering at the University of São Paulo.
- **2012-2016** — Worked as a software engineer at Microsoft, including work related to Bing responses.
- **2016** — Joined Google and worked on machine learning for YouTube.
- **2020** — Google published Meena research with De Freitas as a lead author.
- **2021** — Co-founded Character.AI with Noam Shazeer after work on LaMDA.
- **2022** — Character.AI opened its public beta in September.
- **2023** — Character.AI announced a $150 million Series A and a $1 billion valuation.
- **2024** — Joined Google DeepMind after a non-exclusive licensing agreement between Google and Character.AI.

## Achievements

- Led development of Google conversational models Meena and LaMDA.
- Co-authored the Meena and LaMDA research papers.
- Co-founded Character.AI and served as its president.
- Helped launch Character.AI public beta, whose users sent over 2 billion messages in its first five months, according to the company.

## Latest updates

- **2024-08** — De Freitas joined Google DeepMind as Google and Character.AI entered a non-exclusive technology licensing agreement.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-de-freitas-3a350464
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/dan_defr

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/daniel-de-freitas
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-29