Updated on 16 Oct 2026.
Is Character AI shutting down? Not right now. Character.AI is still running, and you can reach every one of its services while the company is sold under court supervision. That comes from the company's own update of 12 October 2026. The same update says the platform "will be wound down" only if the sale fails to produce a bid that keeps it running, and that the company expects the process to finish "by the end of November or perhaps early December 2026" (Character.AI). For the filing itself, the Disney deal and the money behind it, read our Character.AI bankruptcy explainer. This post is about your account: your chats, the characters you made, and what you pay each month.
Character.AI is a chatbot app where people talk with AI characters, including characters other users have made. Its parent company, Character Technologies, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on 12 October 2026 to sell the business (Traders Agency).
If you would rather not wait for the court, YourCrush.AI lets you rebuild a favourite character from the definition you save today, so your backup turns straight back into a conversation.
Is Character.AI shutting down, and which dates decide it?
No shutdown has been announced. The app stays open through the sale, and a wind-down only happens if no bid keeps the platform running (Character.AI). The real answer lands in late November, when bids close and the court holds its sale hearing.
The company describes the filing as a voluntary Chapter 11 process "to facilitate a court-supervised sale of the company", covering all or substantially all of its assets (Character.AI). The case is 26-11603 (BLS) in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (PPC Land). Reuters reported the company was losing about $8 million a month (Computerworld); the reasons are in our post on why Character.AI is going bankrupt.
Here are the dates in the sale motion, as reported by PPC Land and Traders Agency:
| Date (2026) | What happens |
|---|---|
| 13 November, 4:00 pm ET | Deadline for objections to the sale |
| 20 November, 5:00 pm ET | Deadline for bids |
| 23 November | Auction, only if rival bids come in |
| 24 November | Sale hearing |
| 17 December | Outside date for the Disney deal |
The bid on the table does not keep the app alive on its own. Disney is the "stalking-horse" bidder, offering $20 million for a non-exclusive, perpetual license to certain intellectual property, and it is not buying the app (NBC News, reporting Reuters). Tom's Guide notes the deal does not establish that Disney will keep the app or its community (Tom's Guide via Yahoo Tech). Other bidders can top it, starting at $21.7 million (PPC Land). My read: whether the app survives depends on someone who actually wants the app itself bidding by 20 November, and nothing public yet says that buyer exists.
The app had already changed before the filing. Late in 2025 it added age verification and ended open-ended chats for users under 18 (Trending Topics). Our Character.AI age verification guide explains how those checks work.
How YourCrush.AI lets you bring a favourite character back from the definition you saved
Once you have saved your character's definition (the backup steps are further down), that is enough to start again, and you do not need to write code to do it. YourCrush.AI builds a character from a name, an image, a description, a backstory and a greeting, all filled in on the YourCrush.AI character creator.
Your saved greeting goes in its own field, and your example dialogue can sit inside the description or backstory as a guide to the voice. YourCrush.AI lets you pick traits and speaking-style words, which is where the tone you noticed in those example lines belongs. YourCrush.AI can also draft the fields for you from a name and an image, and you then edit the draft against the text you saved.
Once the character is talking, YourCrush.AI keeps the details you pin as memories, so the history you describe early on stays in the conversation. YourCrush.AI is 18+ only, and conversations are not sold to third parties.
What happens to your Character.AI chats?
Your chats stay with the company, inside the bankruptcy estate, and no buyer has said it will keep them. Disney's license excludes them.
According to the Disney term sheet as read by PPC Land, the license leaves out the app, the brand, domains, user data, chats, and user inputs and outputs. Those stay in the estate and are available to other bidders (PPC Land). So your conversation history is part of what is for sale, and it is not part of what Disney is paying for.
What a buyer would do with them is unknown. There is no public statement on whether a buyer would keep existing chats (Tom's Guide via Yahoo Tech). The company says its privacy and security practices have not changed, and that you can still delete your account or export your data through the app or website (Character.AI).
What happens to the characters you made?
Nobody has said. There is no public statement on whether a buyer would keep user-made characters (Tom's Guide via Yahoo Tech), and the Disney license covers code, tools and patents, not the app or what users put into it (PPC Land).
One thing is settled already, and it predates the sale. After Disney sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter in late September 2025, Character.AI removed bots that used Disney characters (NBC News, reporting Reuters). If a Disney character bot vanished from your list, the bankruptcy is not why.
A character you built is a definition plus the chats you had with it. The definition is the part you can rebuild elsewhere, and the backup section below covers saving it.
What happens to your Character.AI subscription?
Billing carries on as before. Paid subscriptions stay active, and the company says subscribers will be told in advance if paid features change (Character.AI). You keep getting charged unless you cancel (Tom's Guide via Yahoo Tech).
No refund policy has been announced for subscribers if the platform is wound down. That's a gap, not a promise either way. My advice: find your next renewal date now, and if it falls after 24 November, decide before it whether another month is worth paying while the outcome is open. Cancelling is your call. Nothing in the company's update requires it.
How do you back up your Character.AI chats and characters now?
If you're wondering whether is character ai shutting down, the practical answer is to act before you need to. Request your data export now through the official route: Character.AI's help article, "How do I download my data?", walks through it in your account settings. Then copy the character definitions you care about by hand, because an export is a record, not a working chat.
Tom's Guide warns that an export may not keep the interactive experience and may not import into other apps (Tom's Guide via Yahoo Tech). Follow the steps in the help article as written. Menus change, and the article is the version the company maintains.
For each character you made, or each one you would hate to lose, copy three things into a plain document: the greeting (the first message the character sends), the description (who the character is), and a handful of example dialogue lines that show how it talks. Those three pieces carry most of what makes a character feel like itself.
Our backup checklist (this is our advice, not a company statement):
- Request the data export today, using the steps in the help article, well before the 20 November bid deadline.
- Open each character you made and copy its greeting, description and example dialogue into a document you control.
- Write down the names of the characters you made and the ones you talk to most, with their creators.
- Copy out the specific conversations that matter to you, since the export may not be a chat you can continue.
- Check your subscription renewal date and decide about it before it comes round.
- Keep the export file and your notes in two places, such as your computer and a backup drive.
What should you do if Character.AI does shut down?
If no bid keeps the platform running, the company says it will be wound down (Character.AI), and it has not published a timetable for that. What you saved before then is what you keep.
From there the job is finding a new home for the characters you saved. Our guide to Character.AI alternatives compares apps on memory, content rules and price. Those three things decide whether a rebuilt character feels the same.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I move my Character.AI characters?
YourCrush.AI lets you rebuild them from the greeting, description and example lines you saved, then pin the memories you want the character to keep. Our Character.AI alternatives guide compares the other apps people are moving to.
Is Character.AI getting removed?
Not right now. The app is still running while the court-supervised sale plays out, and it only gets wound down if no bid comes in to keep it alive (Character.AI).
When will we know if Character AI is shutting down?
Late November is the window to watch. Bids are due 20 November, and the sale hearing is set for 24 November, according to the sale motion as reported by PPC Land. The company itself expects to wrap things up "by the end of November or perhaps early December 2026" (Character.AI).
How do I export my Character.AI chats?
Start with the official help article, "How do I download my data?". It walks you through the export in your account settings, and the company confirms the export still works through the app or the website (Character.AI).
How do I download my Character.AI characters?
Request the data export, but don't stop there. Copy each character's greeting, description and example dialogue by hand as well, because an export may not preserve the interactive experience or import cleanly into other apps (Tom's Guide via Yahoo Tech).
Does Character.AI have access to your chats?
Yes. The company holds them, and in the sale they stay in the bankruptcy estate, outside Disney's license and open to other bidders (PPC Land). Character.AI says its privacy and security practices haven't changed (Character.AI).