The team behind Cove, a Sequoia-backed startup developing an AI-powered collaboration board, has joined Microsoft. This news came via an email to customers informing them that Cove’s service is shutting down.
Cove was founded in late 2023 by Stephen Chau, Andy Szybalski, and Mike Chu, former Google Maps engineers who worked on features like Street View. The startup raised six million dollars in a 2024 seed round from Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil, Homebrew, Adverb, Scott Belsky, and Lenny Rachitsky.
Its tool was an infinite whiteboard that allowed users to employ AI to generate different blocks for tasks such as trip planning. The founders believed the standard chat interface for AI was too rigid, and that a canvas offered more flexibility for exploring different directions with prompts. Cove also let users incorporate a built-in browser, PDFs, and images to provide context to its AI, which could then create new cards, tables, and lists.
The startup competed with other visual collaboration platforms like Miro, TLDraw, and Kosmik.
In the email to customers, the company stated the entire Cove team is joining Microsoft and the product will shut down on April 1, with all user data being deleted. Cove has refunded all subscriptions for March and is offering a data export process.
The company shared in a blog post, “When we started Cove, we set out to reimagine how people collaborate with AI. As model capabilities have accelerated, our conviction in that mission has only grown stronger. We’re thrilled to continue this work at Microsoft AI, where we’ll have the opportunity to pursue an even bigger vision.” They added that “the ideas behind it will live on” within Microsoft.
Notably, Microsoft previously added its Copilot AI to its own collaboration product, Whiteboard, in 2023. TechCrunch reached out to Microsoft for details on how it plans to integrate Cove’s technology but did not immediately receive a response.