Tag: acquisition

OpenAI buys a remote collaboration platform

Posted on by faz_business


OpenAI is on an M&A tear.

Days after acquiring database tech firm Rockset, OpenAI has purchased Multi (previously Remotion), a startup developing a enterprise-focused, video-first collaboration platform. A source familiar with the matter says that the deal is technically an acquihire and that most of Multi’s team — around five people — will join OpenAI following the deal’s close.

Alexander Embiricos, Multi’s CEO and one of its co-founders, says that Multi will shut down after July 24, 2024.

“We’re beyond excited to share that Multi is joining OpenAI,” he wrote in a post on Multi’s blog. “Thank you to everybody who used Multi. It was a privilege building with you, and we learned a ton from you.”

With Multi, Embiricos (an ex-Dropbox product manager) and Multi’s second co-founder, Charley Ho (an ex-Google software engineer), set out to build a Zoom-based platform designed for remote teams to work together through video chats. Multi offered features like the ability to collaborate across screen shares from up to 10 people at the same time, customizable shortcuts and automatic deep links for code, designs and documents.

According to Crunchbase data, Multi raised $13 million in cash from VCs including Greylock and First Round Capital prior to today’s exit.

As with the Rockset buy, the Multi deal seems to fit into OpenAI’s broader recent strategy of investing heavily in enterprise solutions. OpenAI recently revealed that the corporate tier of its viral AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT, had close to 600,000 users, including 93% of all Fortune 500 firms.

In May, OpenAI signed an agreement with PwC to resell OpenAI’s tools to other businesses. The month before, the company launched a business-oriented custom AI model tuning and consulting program. The enterprise entreaties appear to be paying dividends, with OpenAI’s annualized revenue set to eclipse $3.4 billion this year, per a report in The Information.

Along the same vein as OpenAI’s other corporate efforts, could we one day see a spruced-up ChatGPT with videoconferencing and remote collaboration features? Maybe. I wouldn’t put it past OpenAI — particularly as the lag time between the company’s flagship models lengthens.



The owner of WordPress has bought Beeper, the app that flipped the bird to Apple’s iMessage supremacy

Posted on by faz_business


WordPress and Tumblr owner Automattic has bought Beeper, the maker of the Beeper Mini app that challenged Apple’s iMessage dominion late last year. Although it ultimately lost that battle (after, oh, about three days), the incident gave the DOJ more ammunition in its antitrust suit against the iPhone maker. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Automattic paid $125 million, a surprisingly hefty price for the startup.

Automattic already has an app called Texts that taps into the APIs of various chat services for a universal messaging experience. Beeper has essentially the same mission and branding, and the two competitors will now merge their teams under Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky, who will join Automattic.

You may also remember Migicovsky as the creator of the Pebble smartwatch, the charmingly simple pre-Apple Watch device that helped kickstart mainstream interest in wearable tech in the early 2010s. On Tuesday, he told The New York Times that Beeper and Texts will launch a combined service later this year. The two teams will reportedly begin work in two weeks during a meeting in Portugal.

On Tuesday, Migicovsky wrote in a blog post that the two companies go way back. “Matt [Mullenweg], Automattic’s CEO, and I have known each other for years,” he wrote. “He was an early user, supporter and investor in Beeper. We’re very well aligned on our goal (build the best chat app on earth), approach (open source where possible), and independence (Beeper will operate independently as part of Automattic’s Other Bets division).”

Automattic’s buying price is a bit of a head-scratcher, considering Beeper Mini’s claim to fame — iMessage integration on Android — was squashed after only a few days in the spotlight. Beeper framed the brief showdown as a fight for open, secure messaging standards. (It also helped the startup make more of a name for itself.) Apple saw it as a threat to one of its walled garden’s main attractions: the iPhone-to-iPhone chats’ blue bubbles with features like reactions and higher-resolution image and video-sharing.

Another reason to question Automattic’s acquisition price is Apple’s plan to bring RCS (rich communication services) support to iPhones later this year. Although the bubbles will remain green between iPhone and Android users, RCS chats replicate much of the iMessage appeal with a similar feature set, including end-to-end encryption.

Automattic’s interim chief executive, Toni Schneider, told The NYT that he sees the regulatory tradewinds blowing in a more open direction that will favor cross-platform, universal messaging apps like Beeper. Still, from my understanding, tapping into other services’ APIs is something the right coders could easily duplicate (including the Texts team Automattic already owned). Perhaps the real main attraction was the brand Beeper built for itself in taking on Apple.