Character.AI bankruptcy: the sale now runs to December. What that means for your chats and characters

Character.AI is still in Chapter 11 and the app is still available, but the sale calendar changed this week. On November 4, 2026, Judge Brendan Shannon of the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware signed the order that sets the rules for selling the company’s assets (Docket No. 106). Bids are now due November 24, the auction is set for December 1, and the hearing to approve a sale runs December 3 and 4. Character.AI posted the full sale notice on its blog on November 5.

These dates replace the proposed ones in our October 30 post on the filing, which listed bids on November 20, an auction on November 23 and a sale hearing on November 24. Those were the company’s draft dates. The signed order moved every one of them later.

As of November 6 the Character.AI iPhone app is still listed on the US App Store (version 1.17.4, released October 2) and its Google Play page still loads. The company’s October 12 post says the platform “remains up and running” and that users “can continue to access all services at this time.”

The dates now on file

All times are US Eastern. The sources are the sale notice the company filed on November 4 (Docket No. 117), which its blog reproduces word for word, and the signed order itself.

Date	What happens
November 14	Last day for the company to name an extra lead bidder for assets Disney is not buying
November 18, 4:00 p.m.	Deadline to object to the sale
November 24, 12:00 p.m.	Deadline to submit a bid for any assets
December 1, 10:00 a.m.	Auction, unless cancelled or adjourned
December 3 and 4, 9:30 a.m.	Sale hearing
December 17	Latest closing date bidders must commit to

PPC Land, which compared the signed order against the October 27 draft, counts the auction as moving eight days and the sale hearing nine. The order lets the company push these dates back again, in consultation with others including counsel for the states and the winning bidder, by announcing it in court or filing a notice on the docket.

What Disney is bidding for, and what it isn’t

Disney is the “stalking horse,” the opening bidder others have to beat. CNBC reported its offer as $20 million to license some of Character.AI’s intellectual property, plus transition services through former employees Disney hired. The order approves bid protections for Disney, a break-up fee and expense reimbursement of $700,000, or 3.5% of the cash price. A rival bid for the same assets has to equal Disney’s deal plus that fee plus $1,000,000, which PPC Land works out to $21.7 million.

For users, the relevant line is a footnote in the sale notice: “The Disney Target Assets exclude PII.” PII is personally identifiable information as section 101(41A) of the Bankruptcy Code defines it: a list that starts with a user’s name, home address, email address and phone number. So the Disney deal, as filed, doesn’t take those details. The definition doesn’t name chat content, but its last clause also reaches “any other information concerning an identified individual” that could be used to contact or identify that person, and the filings we read don’t say whether chats count.

Disney’s bid isn’t a purchase of the app: CNBC describes it as a license to some of the company’s intellectual property. Everything else needs a different buyer. PPC Land, going by the company’s earlier descriptions, lists the app, the brand and the user base among those assets. On November 5 the company filed a blank form of purchase agreement for “assets other than the Disney Target Assets” (Docket No. 136). The form leaves the scope to the buyer, with a note reading “Purchaser to determine scope of the Purchased Assets.” No such buyer appears on the docket through entry No. 136, which we read on November 6. The company said on October 12 that if no bid for the platform turns up, “the platform will be wound down.”

On privacy, the signed order is quiet. Neither our search of its text nor PPC Land’s reading found any mention of a consumer privacy ombudsman, the independent reviewer that the US Trustee and a coalition of states asked for. Nothing in the order settles whether one will be named before a sale that includes user data.

The order also decides how you hear about any of this. The company may notify users who have no recorded claim against it by “posting such notice on its platform” and/or by email. The November 5 blog post is that notice.

Your chats and the export clock

Character.AI’s help page, updated October 8, says a data export “may take 3-4 weeks” and that the download link works for 7 days after the email arrives. A request sent today, November 6, would come back between November 27 and December 4. That lands on top of the December 1 auction and the December 3 and 4 sale hearing. One sent on November 15 would come back between December 6 and December 13, after both.

If you want a copy, ask now. On the web the path is Profile, Profile Settings, Account, Manage Account & Data, Export Data. In the mobile app it’s Profile, the Settings icon, Legal & Privacy, Export Data. The help page doesn’t say what the file contains or in what format. Our guide to deleting a Character.AI account covers the delete path and how it compares with 18 other apps.

Characters you made

Character.AI’s terms of service say that when you create a character, “as between you and Character.AI, you own all rights in that Character.” The same section gives the company a “nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license” to the content you submit. The ToS Watchdog review of those terms sums it up as owning your characters “minus the substance.”

A transferable license is the kind of right that can move with assets in a sale. None of the filings we read say whether user-made characters are part of any lot. The export help page doesn’t promise that character definitions come out in the file either. If a character took you hours to write, keep your own copy of the text you gave it rather than counting on the export.

Where to keep a backup character

If you want a second app running before December, the ones below let you build your own characters. The availability column is from Apple’s lookup service and Google Play, checked November 6. The character details come from each app’s own pages, last checked October 27.

App	Your own characters	US iPhone App Store
Janitor AI	Yes, with creator guides and lorebooks	Listed (version 2.8.0, Nov 2)
Talkie	Yes; its terms refer to users’ IP rights in the characters they create	Listed as “Talkie Lab - AI Playground”
PolyBuzz	Yes, free, public or private	Not listed; Android and web
Chai	Yes, private or shared	Not listed; Android
Kindroid	10 per subscription, 2 in the free preview	Listed
Nomi	Multiple Nomis, each with its own personality	Listed

For someone used to Character.AI’s public library of user-made bots, Janitor AI and Talkie are the closest match, and both are still on the US App Store. PolyBuzz and Chai work the same way but are gone from the US iPhone store, which we covered in the post on those removals. Kindroid and Nomi are built around a few companions of your own rather than a shared catalog. Side by side pages: Character.AI vs Janitor AI, Character.AI vs Talkie and Character.AI vs PolyBuzz.

Before you paste anything personal into a new app, check its data rules. Which companion apps train on your chats lists what each one says.

We’ll update this page after the November 24 bid deadline. The order only requires the company to tell bidders by November 25 which bids qualify and to file a notice naming the winning bidder after the auction, so whether anyone bid for the platform itself may not show up on the docket until the December 1 auction.