> Both companies had arrived at a similar view of the future where AI will redefine every business application and workflow — and reinvent productivity as we know it today into a place where humans and AI work together everywhere you get work done. We want to rethink a suite of tools and come together to provide users and teams with their own AI productivity platform for apps and agents.<p>> We discussed each of our paths to achieving this vision, and while both teams felt confident in their paths, it was obvious that we would move much faster together. The way that each of us has approached this market is different but inherently complementary. And so the conversation became... “What if we merged the companies?”<p>> Over the next few days, through discussions with Grammarly CEO (Rahul Roy-Chowdhury) and the co-founders (Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko) we started sketching out what a combined company would feel like: how the teams would fit together, where the products could immediately integrate and amplify, etc. And we also discussed the leadership structure, and agreed that I would lead the joint company as CEO.<p>> With a round of sushi and some sake, we shook hands — excited to work together on the future of AI.<p>—<p>The idea that any acquisition, but especially this one, was minted in this fashion is hilarious.
Grammarly has been having an identity crisis ever since LLMs made grammar checking accessible to every company at a fraction of the cost. ChatGPT is killing a lot of companies and grammarly was the first collateral.<p>This acquisition is concerning because Grammarly is well known for its bad privacy policy and how it's essentially a keylogger. Now that it has access to probably thousands of companies data hosted on Coda is a huge concern.<p>But it's high time Grammarly evolves itself into some other product or die trying.
In the PR, they use some of the ambiguity around the term <i>AI</i> to claim it's AI native. It isn't LLM native, but they indeed were using things that encompass AI.<p>If anyone else thought of Panic, here's what happened with that Coda: <a href="https://panic.com/coda/" rel="nofollow">https://panic.com/coda/</a>
> And we also discussed the leadership structure, and agreed that I would lead the joint company as CEO.<p>Pretty interesting twist. It’s almost as if Coda acquired Grammarly.
From what I can tell, Grammarly bought coda for 150M and a ceo position forced by the VC’s.. it was their only option. Yes I agree they are under the same VC’s. Grammarly has a leadership problem, and coda has a money problem. shishir has a huge influence in Silicon Valley due to his YouTube days. So yes, two companies struggling to survive. One has reputable leader living off his past success (not current) and one company with money but no leadership. It’s a lifeline for both and last chance to show they can be successful. I guarantee shishir has two years to prove he can be a leader or he is out of the game. It was way to save egos and hopefully make a good company.
A bit surprised OpenAI didn’t acquire coda. Solid leadership team and the product would be a nice complement to OAI’s current portfolio. Lots of AI usage will seamlessly live in productivity tools which means OAI is disintermediated at point of use by its biggest rival Google (workspace) or its frenemy MSFT (office). Coda’s tools seemed well built and available for a fraction of the cost of buying eg Notion.
I wish mergers were not possible. I feel like the merger/acquisition thing has gone way to far to make behemonth corporations that help no one but the rich.
Seems interesting<p>For Coda this makes sense to kind of kickstart/boost their AI efforts.<p>But not immediately clear to me why Grammarly is interested in building their own doc builder tool?
Grammarly may be a fine tool, but I have hated it ever since their incredibly insulting “we think you’re too stupid to differentiate ‘you’ and ‘you\’re’” ad campaign.<p>Whatever cool things Grammarly may do, the brand won’t work for me.