OpenAI has just announced the acquisition of a product testing startup Statsig, for over a billion dollars.
They're also making a whole bunch of changes to their leadership team.
This is coming on the back of a $300 billion valuation in a round of funding.
So today on the podcast, I'm going to be breaking down everything changing at OpenAI, this new acquisition, how it's going to be structured, especially in comparison to a lot of the acquihires we've seen in Silicon Valley as of late.
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All right, let's talk about what's going on with OpenAI right now.
We've just posted, they made a blog post where they're basically acquiring the company Statsig.
Statsig is an interesting company.
They are basically one that is helping to do, they help to review products, I believe.
This is an all stock deal.
So it's one of the largest acquisitions ever by ChatGPT.
And it's happening now that they have this $300 billion valuation.
They're able to go and acquire a company for, let's say, a billion dollars, but it's all stock.
And they basically have a lot of firepower because the valuation is so high.
So something that's interesting about the deal of Statsig.
You know they say that they are your one-stop data platform for product development.
You can build faster and make smarter decisions with integrated platform for experimentation analytics, feature flags, session replays and more.
So they're doing a lot of basically helping product development, look at the data and and kind of working on that.
So this company is actually based out of Seattle.
And what's interesting is opening.
I said that once they acquire the company which, by the way, is pending regulatory approval.
So it seems like they're doing it the classic acquisition way, which I think is going to be popular for most people in Silicon Valley, because we've seen so many of these companies basically acquired recently.
Right like Zuckerberg or Google will go and hire their like leadership team, the top five people at the company, leave everybody else and basically just leave the company high and dry without the kind of their star players.
So a lot of people have complained about this, especially when the original key players don't get any sort of payout.
Maybe they have shares or equity.
Then it doesn't really vest.
So people can be kind of disgruntled about those types of deals.
So it seems like OpenAI is trying to do this the traditional way with the acquisition, but there is regulatory approval.
So it seems like this isn't guaranteed.
It feels like it's kind of a good time to start testing the waters and seeing if the current administration is going to just let These acquisitions happen quickly or if they're going to hold them up like the last administration.
My hope is that we can start doing these acquisitions in a timely manner and get back to business as usual with that, so that the entire company, all the employees, are going to get some sort of benefit when there is a sale, et cetera.
OpenAI said that, assuming everything goes through with this acquisition and the regulatory approval, all of the StatSig employees are going to become OpenAI employees.
But they said they're going to continue working from the same office and they're going to basically just keep working for the clients at StatSig.
The company isn't shutting down or changing.
The clients are still going to be helped, but OpenAI is going to basically own that company and control it.
And I think most importantly is the CEO, who is Vijay Raji, is going to become the CTO of applications over at OpenAI.
So OpenAI right now is putting a lot of effort into their kind of application business, B2B
And otherwise they're kind of hiring these companies and leadership from these companies that can help grow those different segments inside of their organization.
So it's a $1.1 billion deal.
It's all stock.
The founder and CEO is going to now become the CTO of applications.
Okay, what I do think is interesting is this is the latest effort that OpenAI has made in their kind of quest, basically to build out their application business.
They actually have the former CEO of Instacart, which is Fidji Simo, who is going to, who just started working there a few weeks ago.
Raji is going to report to Simo and is going to be the head of engineering for ChatGPT.
So the company's AI coding tool Codex, and a bunch of future applications that OpenAI is planning on building are all going to kind of fall under that.
So the company says that they are going to bring StatSig's experimentation platform in-house and they're going to accelerate the product development and kind of roll it out to what they're doing.
So it seems like it is one of these like good acquisitions, where they're basically able to use the technology and a lot of what they're doing, but they're also gonna let the company keep running.
And they're going to put money and resources into developing a lot of the product that they were building a stat seg anyways, right.
So maybe they see a lot of potential in it, maybe doesn't have as much money as they would like.
And so they're able to acquire and kind of invest a bunch of cash in there and develop the product, but also use it inside of OpenAI for a lot of the stuff they're doing.
This comes as a whole bunch of changes are being made over OpenAI with their leadership team.
The company's chief product officer is Kevin Whale.
He's gonna become the VP of a new group called OpenAI for Science.
In my opinion, this is honestly super cool.
There was a post over on LinkedIn where Whale basically says that his goal, and kind of the goal of this new organization, this OpenAI for Science organization is, quote to build the next great scientific instrument, an AI-powered platform that accelerates scientific discovery.
He said that he's going to work closely with Sebastian Buick, who is an OpenAI researcher and was also kind of the former VP of AI and was also a distinguished scientist at Microsoft.
So he's bringing on like a really great team.
He said, quote I'm able to do this because the product and design leaders at OpenAI are amazing and now are complimented by Fiji beginning her role as the CEO of applications.
OpenAI's products have been my life since I joined and they're in great hands, right?
So he's moving to a new position, but he's, I think, really excited about this new science role.
Meanwhile, OpenAI's current head of engineering, which is Srinivas Srinivas Nargiannon, also announced in LinkedIn that he was going to transition to a new role as the company's CTO of B2B applications.
So in that role he will be collaborating directly with the COO, Brad Lightcap, who oversees a lot of the company's relations with their enterprise customers.
OpenAI is, I think, doing the right thing by essentially doing this acquisition of Statsig in a more traditional manner bringing the company in and basically all of the employees are gonna be OpenAI employees, but they're still gonna be able to work on the company and work on the customers they have there.
They're gonna get more resources.
It feels like a real win-win for everyone.
I think basically a big part of this is they wanted to poach the CEO of Statsig to work inside of opening i, a very talented person, but i think they're doing good by the company originally, by bringing it in, using its technology, keeping everybody happy employed, not laying everybody off like i.
Just feel like we've seen so many nightmares uh, especially from like google and i, i think um, when they, When they acquired, most recently, that vibe coding startup, I think Winsale Windsurf, Windsurf.
And they basically grabbed this, the leadership, the CEO, the CTO, left everybody else.
No one else got any sort of payout from the organization and a lot of shares and equity and stocks got like wiped out and stuff.
So I think overall opening eyes, doing this the right way, they're going to get a lot of goodwill in the community.
And I think it'll be interesting to see what they're able to do with a lot of this new leadership.
And it'll be interesting to see if we see more of these acquisitions, for like this is an all stock acquisition right.
Like there is no, there's no cash here, $1.1 billion, but it is all stock.
So you got to sit there, vest it out, wait till the next liquidity event for OpenAI and hope that the rocket ship just keeps on growing.
Hey, everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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