The team back Little porta Sequoia-backed startup working on an artificial intelligence collaboration board has joined Microsoft, according to an email sent to customers informing them that Cove’s service is being terminated.
Cove was founded in late 2023 by Stephen Chau, Andy Szybalski, and Mike Chu, who all worked on Google Maps features like Street View. The startup raised $6 million in a first round from Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil, Homebrew, Adverb, Scott Belsky and Lenny Rachitsky in 2024.
His tool was an infinite matrix where AI can create different blocks for tasks like travel planning. The founders felt that the chat interface for the AI was not editable and a canvas provided more flexibility when going in different directions with prompts.
Cove also allowed users to access an embedded browser, PDF files, and images to give more context to its AI, which could create new cards, tables, and lists.
The startup competed with the likes of Miro, TLDraw and Kosmik.
The company said in an email to customers that the entire Cove team is joining Microsoft and the product will be shut down on April 1 and all user data will be deleted. Cove reported that it has refunded all subscriptions for March and is offering a data extraction process.
“When we started Cove, we set out to rethink the way people interact with artificial intelligence. As the capabilities of the models have accelerated, our belief in this mission has grown stronger. We’re excited to continue this work at Microsoft AI, where we’ll have the opportunity to pursue an even bigger vision,” the company she said in a blog post on her website.
Additionally, the company said that “the ideas behind it [Cove] will live on’ within Microsoft. Specifically, Microsoft added Copilot to its own collaboration product, White boardin 2023.
TechCrunch reached out to Microsoft to find out how it plans to integrate Cove’s technology into its ecosystem, but did not immediately hear back.
