Charisma.ai is a UK-based platform for creating interactive, character-driven conversational experiences powered by AI. Writers and developers design branching scenarios in a visual story editor, then deploy them as responsive virtual characters that can hold natural conversations across web, mobile, VR, and live event formats.
The platform combines a proprietary dialogue engine with large language models, structured scene graphs, and emotion and memory systems so that characters stay in role, remember user choices, and respond believably to free-form input. Customers use Charisma for corporate training simulations, educational role-play, marketing campaigns, immersive theatre, and game prototyping.
Charisma.ai was founded in 2015 by Guy Gadney and Ben Salili-James and is headquartered in Oxford, United Kingdom. Gadney brought a background in interactive entertainment, having previously worked on pioneering digital products for the BBC, Sky, Penguin Books, and Fox, including Emmy- and BAFTA-nominated projects.
The company has raised a modest amount of seed funding, totalling roughly $650,000 across two rounds, with Venrex among the lead investors and additional support from Digital Catapult and other UK-focused backers. Charisma has won the Digital Catapult Responsible and Ethical Tech Pioneer Award for its approach to safe conversational AI.
Charisma has partnered with major brands and broadcasters including Sky, the BBC, Warner Bros Discovery, and DreamWorks Animation on interactive entertainment projects, and is increasingly used in corporate L&D for soft-skills training. Its competitors include Inworld AI and Convai in the character-AI category, but Charisma differentiates with its writer-first authoring tools and responsible-AI positioning.