The news: OpenAI will acquire product-testing startup Statsig for $1.1 billion as it expands its applications division.
Statsig CEO Vijaye Raji, formerly vice president and head of entertainment at Facebook, will join OpenAI as CTO of applications. OpenAI said the deal, pending regulatory approval, will help it develop “even better, more responsive experiences for the people and businesses we serve,” per a press release.
Why it matters: Statsig’s A/B testing tools allow for fast, data-driven feature experimentation and safe rollouts, which are crucial for building reliable and user-friendly AI products. This could help OpenAI and other developers deploy apps more rapidly.
- OpenAI products like Codex, Sora, and Operator could reach mobile platforms more quickly.
- It could also strengthen OpenAI’s support for developers and companies building on its APIs, laying the foundation for an AI app development platform, similar to what Amazon Web Services (AWS) did for cloud computing.
The opportunity: The acquisition hints at an intent to move beyond models into full-fledged apps, potentially including social, productivity, and enterprise tools.
- An AI-native social app could rival Meta AI, pulling in generative AI (genAI) content creation from OpenAI’s library of tools.
- A copilot for teams app with Slack-style functions and trustworthy AI features.
- An app store for AI agents, similar to AWS’, that lets developers launch OpenAI-backed tools with built-in analytics and deployment support.
Our take: This deal positions OpenAI to launch entirely new categories of AI-powered experiences—personalized content feeds, collaborative AI tools, or productivity suites.
It could position OpenAI as not just a model provider, but the owner of an AI app ecosystem. OpenAI is trying to own the stack, from core models to a new generation of intelligent, user-facing applications. This could drop the barrier between consumer and enterprise apps, allowing marketing teams to build social AI experiences, interactive agents, and personalized content systems, all under OpenAI’s umbrella.