OpenAI Acquires Roi: Doubling Down on Personalized AI Experiences
OpenAI has just snapped up Roi, an AI-driven personal finance app. Interestingly, it seems like only the CEO, Sujith Vishwajith, is making the move over to OpenAI. He announced the acquisition, mentioning that he's the only one from Roi's team joining OpenAI. The details of the deal haven't been shared, and Roi will be shutting down its services by mid-October.
This acquisition is part of a recent trend where OpenAI is bringing in talent through these types of deals. It's not clear if Roi's tech will be integrated into OpenAI's systems or what Vishwajith will be working on. However, it looks like it's all about personalization and managing our lives better with AI, which OpenAI seems to be focusing on. Roi specialized in making finance personalized, and those lessons could be applied in other areas.
Roi, which started in 2022, aimed to gather all your financial info in one place, like stocks, crypto, and even NFTs. It wanted to help you track your money, understand what's happening, and make smart trades.
Vishwajith explained that they wanted to make investing easy for everyone by creating a super personalized experience. They realized that personalization isn't just important for finance but for all kinds of software. Think about it: software that adapts to you, learns from you, and feels more human.
For example, Roi allowed users to customize how the AI companion would respond. If you wanted it to talk to you like a Gen-Z kid and roast you, it would! That's the idea – making software more engaging by making it feel personal.
This vision fits well with what OpenAI is doing with things like Pulse, which creates personalized news, and Sora, which is like a TikTok but with AI-generated content.
Furthermore, this move shows that OpenAI isn't just aiming to be a behind-the-scenes tech provider. They want to create their own apps that people use directly. Acquiring talent like Vishwajith will certainly help them with that.
Before Roi, Vishwajith worked at Airbnb, where he learned how to optimize user behavior to boost revenue. He even mentioned that a small change in code resulted in millions of dollars in additional revenue.
Given that OpenAI is spending a lot on data centers and infrastructure, making money through consumer apps is becoming increasingly important. Adding talent is the way to go.
Source: TechCrunch