Character Technologies, the company behind Character.AI, filed for Chapter 11 on 12 October 2026 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The aim is a court-supervised sale of the company, not a restructuring. If you have months of chats there, export them now: an export takes 3 to 4 weeks, and the sale is due to close in late November or early December.
What Character.AI says
The company’s own post, published the day it filed, makes four points:
- It “has initiated a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process to facilitate a court-supervised sale of the company”.
- “The Character.ai platform remains up and running, and you can continue to access all services at this time.”
- “If such a bid is unavailable, however, the platform will be wound down.”
- It expects the sale to be “complete by the end of November or perhaps early December 2026”.
It also says its data privacy and security practices are unchanged, and that you can export your data or delete your account in the app or on the website.
What is for sale
Disney Worldwide Services is the stalking-horse bidder at $20 million. That bid sets the floor price, and other bidders can still top it. The court has to approve the bidding rules first.
What Disney bid for is narrower than the whole company: a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to selected intellectual property and certain claims. Reporting on the filing says that deal excludes user data and chats. That matters less than it sounds, because Disney may not end up the winner. SAN reports that the company has not said whether user chats are among the assets it plans to sell to anyone else.
Two more details from the coverage: chief executive Karandeep Anand left in September 2026 to become Disney’s chief technology officer, and Disney has offered jobs to 66 of the company’s roughly 86 full-time staff.
What the privacy policy allows
Character.AI’s privacy policy, effective 1 July 2026, lets it disclose information “in connection with or during negotiations or closing of any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition”. That is standard wording, and every AI companion app we checked has a version of it (see our comparison of seven policies).
The same policy says Character.AI uses collected data to train its models. It may also keep a character you made public running even after you delete your account.
How to export your Character.AI chats
These steps come from Character.AI’s help centre, updated in October 2026.
On the web
- Go to your profile.
- Click Profile Settings, then Account.
- Click Manage Account & Data, then Export Data.
A pop-up confirms that a download link will arrive by email.
In the mobile app
- Open your profile and tap the settings icon.
- Tap Legal & Privacy, then Export Data.
A “Success” banner confirms the request.
The export can take 3 to 4 weeks. The link arrives at the email address on your account and stays valid for 7 days, so check that you can still get into that inbox. The export covers your whole account, and the help centre describes no way to export a single chat. If one long conversation matters to you, copy it into a document as well.
What to do next
- Request the export today. At 3 to 4 weeks, a request made in late October may only just beat the sale.
- Do not rush to delete. Deleting ends your access, and a public character you made may stay live anyway.
- If you move to another app, read its sale clause first. Every app we checked lets user data pass to a buyer. We compared seven adult alternatives on price, age rules and what they do with chats.
Character.AI allows users from age 13, or 16 in the EEA and UK. The alternatives we cover are for adults only.