OpenAI starts the new year with another achievement. The artificial intelligence giant is acquiring the team behind Convogo, an enterprise software platform that helps executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders and HR teams automate and improve leadership assessments and feedback reporting.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is not acquiring Convogo’s IP or technology, but rather is hiring the team to work on its “cloud AI efforts.” The three co-founders — Matt Cooper, Evan Cater and Mike Gillett — will join OpenAI as part of what a source familiar with the matter called an all-stock deal.
Convogo’s product will be cleared.
The startup began as a “weekend hackathon” sparked by a question from Cooper’s mother, who is an executive coach: Could an AI tool automate the chore of writing reports so he could spend more time on the human coaching work he loves? Over the past two years, Convogo has helped “thousands” of coaches and partnered with “the world’s leading leadership development firms,” according to an email announcing the acquisition sent by Convogo.
In the email, the team wrote that the real problem they discovered in their work is how to bridge the gap between what is possible with each new model release and how to translate that into real results.
“We’re convinced now more than ever that the key to bridging this gap lies in thoughtful, purpose-built experiences like the one we’ve created for coaches at Convogo,” the founders wrote. “That’s why we’re excited to join OpenAI to continue our work to make artificial intelligence accessible and useful to professionals in every industry.”
Convogo’s hire marks OpenAI’s ninth acquisition in a year, according to PitchBook data. In almost all of these acquisitions, the product was either folded into the OpenAI ecosystem—as in the case of Sky, the AI interface for the Mac, or Statsig, a product testing company—or shut down entirely as the team joined OpenAI, as in the cases of Roi, Context.ai, and Crossing Minds.
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The Convogo deal also signals that OpenAI, like its competitors, is using M&A as an accelerator of talent and capabilities. The main exception to this rule is OpenAI’s acquisition of Jonny Ive’s io products, which continues its product roadmap as the two companies work together to create a piece of AI hardware.
