The Rumored Acquisition: OpenAI and StatSig

0:00OpenAI 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 aqua hires we've seen in Silicon Valley as of late. Before we get into all of that, I wanted to mention I am super excited that my own startup AI Box has finally launched the beta of our no code AI app builder.

0:34If you want to go try it out, you can essentially go to AI box.ai, which I'll leave a link in the description to you can describe any type of product tool that you are trying to build. And we'll use AI to link together multiple AI models, put different prompts in and generate a tool for you can go and tweak it and change it. But basically, you can automate a lot of your workflows and create some impressive tools with our no code AI app builder. So we'd love to have you try it out and let me know what you think about it. There's a link in the description to AI box.ai. Yeah, there's over 40 AI models on there.

1:08You're also able to use all of them on the playground and have one subscription of$20 a month to access all of the different AI models instead of having to pay for tons of different subscriptions. So check it out AI box.ai. All right, let's talk about what's going on with open AI right now. We just posted a they made a blog post where they're basically acquiring the company stats.ig stats.ig is an interesting company. They 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.

1:44They'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, 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 basically helping product development, look at the data and kind of working on that. So this company is actually based out of Seattle.

2:16And 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 aqua hired 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 the original key players don't get any sort of payout maybe they have shares or equity then it doesn't really vest and so people can be kind of disgruntled about those types of deals so it seems like open ai is trying to do this the traditional way with the acquisition, but there is regulatory approval.

2:57So it seems like this isn't guaranteed there. 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, etc. Opening, AI said that assuming everything goes through with this acquisition and the regulatory approval, all of the Statsig employees are going to become OpenAI employees.

3:30But 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. So 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.

4:06So 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 OpenAI is planning on building are all going to kind of fall under that.

4:45so the company says that they are going to bring stat sig'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 going to 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 at stat sig 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.

5:19This 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 going to 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 Buke, who is an OpenAI researcher and was also kind of the former VP of AI and was also a distinguished scientist at Microsoft.

5:58So 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 complemented 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 Srinvas Nargiannan, 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.

6:37OpenAI 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 OpenAI, 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.

7:09I just feel like we've seen so many nightmares, especially from Google. And I think when they acquired most recently that Vibe Coding startup, I think Winsale, Winsurf, Winsurf. 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 wiped out and stuff. So I think overall, OpenAI is 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.

7:45And 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. One point one billion dollars, 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. If you do, make sure to leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. And also, as always, make sure that you go and check out the brand new AI no-code app builder at AIbox.ai.

8:17I hope that you love it, and I hope that you all have a fantastic rest of your day.