Aug 29 (Reuters) - Chatbot startup Character.AI laid off

at least 5% of its staff, The Information reported on Thursday,

citing a person briefed by company leaders.

The employees who were laid off mostly worked on marketing

and recruiting for the startup, the report said.

"We are refocusing the company to ensure all roles align

with our new direction to build personalized AI (artificial

intelligence) products," a Character.AI spokesperson told

Reuters.

"As a result, we have made a small reduction in our

workforce," the spokesperson said, without giving the numbers of

the laid off employees.

Earlier this month, Character.AI signed an agreement with

Alphabet's Google that grants the search engine giant

a non-exclusive license to the chatbot maker's large language

model technology.

Character.AI will get more funding as part of the deal with

Google, the startup had said in a blog, without disclosing the

amount.

Character.AI previously raised $193 million in venture

capital from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. It was in

talks to raise hundreds from millions from Google, Reuters

reported in November.