OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire the product testing startup Statsig. As part of the acquisition, Statsig’s founder and CEO, Vijaye Raji, will join OpenAI as its Chief Technology Officer of Applications.
OpenAI is paying $1.1 billion for Statsig in an all-stock deal. This acquisition is one of the largest ever for the ChatGPT maker, based on the company’s current $300 billion valuation.
The move represents OpenAI’s latest effort to build out its Applications business, which is led by the former CEO of Instacart, Fidji Simo. Simo started at the company a few weeks ago. Vijaye Raji will report directly to Simo and will lead product engineering for ChatGPT, the AI coding tool Codex, and future applications. OpenAI states that bringing Statsig’s experimentation platform in-house will accelerate product development across the entire Applications organization.
With Raji coming on board, OpenAI is also making changes to its leadership team. The company’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, will become the Vice President of a new group called OpenAI for Science. Weil announced that the goal of this new organization is to build a next-generation scientific instrument, an AI-powered platform designed to accelerate scientific discovery. He stated he will work closely with OpenAI researcher Sebastien Bubeck, who was formerly the VP of AI and a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft. Weil expressed confidence in the transition, noting that the product and design leaders are amazing and are now complemented by Fidji Simo.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s current head of engineering, Srinivas Narayanan, announced he will transition to a new role as the company’s CTO of B2B applications. In this capacity, Narayanan says he will collaborate directly with OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer, Brad Lightcap, who oversees many of the company’s relationships with enterprise customers.
OpenAI has stated that the Statsig acquisition is pending regulatory review. Once the deal is completed, all Statsig employees will become OpenAI employees. However, the product testing startup will continue to operate independently and serve its existing customer base from its Seattle office.