OpenAI has added three startup founders to its team after hiring the co-founders of Convogo, an AI-based tool used by executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and human resources teams. Matt Cooper, Evan Cater, and Mike Gillett, who co-founded Convogo, are among the new additions. TechCrunch reported the decision on January 8, quoting a spokeswoman for OpenAI.
OpenAI did not buy Convogo’s products, intellectual property, or underlying technology. Instead, the company hired the founders as workers. As a result of the change, Convogo’s current product will no longer be available. PYMNTS asked OpenAI and Convogo for comments, but they didn’t react right away.
OpenAI says that the three new personnel will work on the company’s AI cloud projects. There were no more specifics given regarding what their precise tasks or duties will be. Cooper acknowledged the transfer in a LinkedIn post that Cater and Gillett later shared. Cooper said in the post that the Convogo team is going to work with OpenAI.
About two years ago, Convogo started up. The software employed AI to write reports for executive coaches automatically. The company asserted that its solutions helped thousands of professionals by making their administrative work easier. Cooper said that the people who started Convogo thought that AI products need to be designed in a certain way to be useful to people. He said that joining OpenAI would let the team make AI experiences that are more focused on professionals on a larger scale.
This hiring fits with OpenAI’s recent plan for growing the company. In the last year, the corporation has bought nine other companies or added new teams to its own. Some acquisitions meant adding products to OpenAI’s ecosystem, while others meant shutting down products once teams joined the firm.
Sky and Statsig are two examples of companies whose products were included to OpenAI services. After joining OpenAI, several businesses like Roi, Context.ai, and Crossing Minds stopped making their products. OpenAI bought iO Products, which was started by Jony Ive, who used to be Apple’s design boss, for little under $6.5 billion in May. As part of OpenAI’s devices division, that section is currently focusing on hardware for AI.
In October, OpenAI also bought Software Applications, a business started by ex-Apple developers who worked on the iPhone Shortcuts app. The goal of that acquisition was to make it easier for ChatGPT to communicate with user devices.
OpenAI’s hiring of Convogo shows that they are still more interested in growing their people and technical skills than in buying separate goods.
