Why Charlamagne Tha God Is Investing in an AI and Metaverse Company

The metaverse is more than just a concept for TV personality and Radio Hall of Fame inductee Lenard McKelvey, known professionally as "Charlamagne Tha God." MeetKai is an AI firm that has created metaverse experiences like one for the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) ahead of this year's NBA All-Star Weekend. The company added Charlamagne as an investor and strategic advisor in August. In addition to backing the company, Charlamagne is also bringing his own programming to the platform, including content from his iHeartRadio program called The Breakfast Club as well as Black Effect Podcast Network. MeetKai has two parts of its business. The first part includes large language models that perform complex tasks through AI agents on behalf of humans. The second part is an interactive metaverse platform that integrates AI across phones, tablets, and headsets by converting these agents into dynamic avatars. MeetKai works with 25 brands like The Wall Street Journal and Tripadvisor. Charlamagne's investment highlights a growing interest in the social and interactive potentials of AI for people. “It’s about getting people into this new future of what social entertainment will look like,” Peter John Alexander, MeetKai’s chief business officer told ADWEEK. ADWEEK spoke to Charlamagne and MeetKai's Alexander about AI and the metaverse. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. ADWEEK: Why invest now and what made you get into the AI game? Charlamagne: The next-level evolution of social media is virtual reality. My mind is always on how people consume conversations. I always thought it would be very cool to have a virtual reality—somebody sitting at home on their computer can interact with The Breakfast Club instead of watching on YouTube. It’s also a lot of those old interviews we did with President Obama or Vice President Kamala Harris, Mariah Carey… you can be in those conversation now. How is this platform different than big players like Meta? Charlamagne: You'll be able to access this from your phone. Alexander: Meta has done a great job focusing on hardware and the amount of billions of dollars they've invested into their headset. Apple has obviously done the same. But an interesting way to think about it is democratizing access. Not everyone can go to the DNC, where Charlemagne gets to go. If you can create these unique spaces that anyone can access, whether that's in a headset or phone, that's the game changer to us. Do users need to have access to a headset to be completely immersed? Alexander: If you want to be fully immersed, where you see nothing but the world that we've created, yes, you will use a headset. If you want to have a fully explorable environment, your phone still works to accomplish that. So, if you're on the subway on the way to work, you can still jump into these experiences. It works across devices. Can you talk about your business model? Alexander: We work with some very big brands, who pay for different types of experiences. There’re obviously revenue shares associated with a different world, advertisements and sponsorships, too. Each of the worlds that we work with, such as the NBPA, there'll be e-commerce or social elements, gated content, and gamification elements. In those, there’s pay-to-play opportunities—premium ways to interact with these worlds. The same thing can be said for Charlemagne. If you want to go to a private session of his interview and have exclusive access, we charge people an entrance fee. As more people join, you'll see a big switch to social experiences effectively fueled by advertising. Charlamagne, has this benefited your business or increased viewership? It will when we start rolling out a lot of these different initiatives. We have eight million monthly listeners on The Breakfast Club. We go live now on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. This is just a different way for them to interact with the show. Our Nipsey Hussle (Los Angeles rapper and entrepreneur) interview on our YouTube page has millions of views. Imagine you're a die-hard Nipsey Hussle fan, and Nipsey is no longer with us, but you can be sitting there in the studio feeling like you're sitting there with him. I just think that's a unique experience. When the metaverse was all the rage, many people saw it as a far-fetched technology. What if people are not yet open to virtual reality? Charlamagne: Sure, but that’s not why you invest in things. I'm already seeing people invested in the VR world, walking around with the headsets. And virtual reality video games are extremely big right now. Alexander: Eventually we're going to be opening up our tools so anyone can go build whatever experiences they want. The tools are no-code solutions and anyone who is extremely good at coding can use it. Charlamagne: Remember when cell phones were huge, and then they scaled down to compact smartphones? I think we’ll see similar growth in the metaverse when headsets become more advanced. One thing that drew me to VR was the Creed boxing game. I love the Creed movie and boxing, and to be in that world just made so much sense. When you allow people to not only create their own world but be in worlds that they're already familiar with, it’s going to make people want to be more involved.

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Why Charlamagne Tha God Is Investing in an AI and Metaverse Company

The Radio Hall of Fame inductee wants to bring new experiences to his fans

Trishla Ostwal

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Trishla Ostwal