OpenAI to acquire the team behind the great AI tool Convogo

OpenAI is starting the new year with another rental project. The AI ​​giant is acquiring the team behind Convogo, an enterprise software platform that helps executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and HR teams streamline and improve leadership analytics and reporting.

An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is not acquiring Convogo’s IP or technology, but is hiring the team to work on its “AI cloud”. The three founders — Matt Cooper, Evan Cater, and Mike Gillett — will join OpenAI as part of what a source familiar with the matter calls a joint venture.

The Convogo product will be damaged.

The startup began as a “weekend hackathon” sparked by a question from Cooper’s mother, who is a principal: Could an AI tool solve the problem of reporting so she could spend more time on her favorite teaching job? Over the past two years, Convogo has helped “thousands” of coaches and partnered with “the world’s top leadership development companies,” per an email that included news of a purchase sent by Convogo.

In an email, the team wrote that the real problem they discovered in their work is how to use the difference between what is possible and the release of a new model and how to translate it into real results.

“We are convinced now more than ever that the key to bridging this gap lies in ideas, built on purpose, like what we have developed for coaches at Convogo,” the founders wrote. “That’s why we’re excited to join OpenAI to continue our mission of making AI useful for professionals in every industry.”

The Convogo acqui-hire marks OpenAI’s ninth acquisition within the year, according to PitchBook data. Almost everything that was purchased, the product was wrapped in the OpenAI environment – as it were. HeavenAI mode for Mac, or Respectfullya drug testing company – or shut down completely when the team joined OpenAI, as it were Roy, Context.aiand Crossing the Mind.

The Convogo deal also shows that OpenAI, like its competitors, is using M&A as a talent and potential accelerator. The only exception to this rule is OpenAI’s discovery Jonny Ive productswhich continues to develop its design as the two companies work together to create a piece of AI hardware.