In a blog post on Tuesday, OpenAI said it had reached terms to buy the product testing company Statsig and would designate Vijaye Raji, the founder and CEO of Applications, would now be Chief Technology Officer for the company.
Among the most important acquisitions made by the developers of ChatGPT in an all-stock deal worth $1.1 billion, this one to OpenAI spokeswoman Kayla Wood, all while the company is now worth $300 billion. OpenAI’s Statsig acquisition reflects OpenAI’s ongoing effort to grow its Applications department, directed by Fidji Simo, the former CEO of Instacart, who joined the company only a few weeks back.
Under Simo, Raji will report directly and supervise product engineering for OpenAI’s recent project “Mental Health Safeguards”, and future projects, including ChatGPT, the AI coding tool Codex. Incorporating Statsig’s experimentation platform, the corporation claims, will improve product development throughout the Applications industry. While Raji starts the team, OpenAI is also making leadership structure adjustments internally.
Kevin Weil, the chief product officer of the firm, revealed on LinkedIn that he will move into the Vice President of a newly founded group called OpenAI for Science. According to Weil, this new group aims to develop the next ground-breaking scientific instrument: an AI-driven platform meant to speed up scientific discovery. He said he will work closely with former Microsoft Vice President of AI and Distinguished Scientist Sebastien Bubeck, an OpenAI researcher.
Furthermore, Srinivas Narayanan, now heading engineering at OpenAI, has posted on LinkedIn that he will transition to a different job as the company’s Chief Technology Officer for Business-to-Business applications. Narayanan said he would collaborate directly with OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer, Brad Lightcap, who oversees many connections with corporate customers. OpenAI has said that the acquisition of Statsig is under governmental oversight. All Statsig employees will become OpenAI employees after this process is over.
