OpenAI has made another acquisition to start the new year. The company behind Convogo, a business software platform that enables executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and HR teams automate and enhance leadership evaluations and feedback reporting, is being acquired by the AI behemoth.
According to a representative for OpenAI, the business is engaging Convogo to work on its “AI cloud efforts” rather than purchasing its technology or intellectual property. According to a source familiar with the situation, the three co-founders of OpenAI, Matt Cooper, Evan Cater, and Mike Gillett, will join the company as part of an all-stock agreement.
Convogo’s product will be discontinued.
Cooper’s mother, an executive coach, asked a question that led to the startup’s “weekend hackathon”: Could an AI tool automate the tedious task of report writing so that Cooper could devote more time to her favorite human coaching work? According to an email announcing the acquisition, Convogo has assisted “thousands” of coaches over the last two years and collaborated with the “world’s top leadership development firms.”
The team stated in the email that the true issue they discovered during their work is how to close the gap between what is feasible with every new model release and how to convert that into practical results.
The founders stated in their letter that they were “more convinced than ever that the key to bridging that gap lies in thoughtful, purpose-built experiences, like what we’ve built for coaches at Convogo.” We are therefore excited to cooperate with OpenAI to further our mission of enabling professionals across all industries to access and benefit from AI.
According to PitchBook data, the Convogo acquisition is OpenAI’s seventh acquisition in a year. In almost all of those acquisitions, the product was either fully shut down as the team joined OpenAI, as was the situation with Roi, Context.ai, and Crossing Minds, or integrated into OpenAI’s ecosystem, as was the case with Sky, the AI interface for Mac, or Statsig, a product testing company.
Additionally, the Convogo transaction shows that OpenAI is leveraging M&A as a talent and capabilities accelerator, just like its rivals. The primary exception to this rule is OpenAI’s purchase of Jonny Ive’s io Products, which is carrying on its product roadmap as the two businesses collaborate to develop a piece of AI hardware.