OpenAI is beginning the year with another acqui-hire, acquiring the team behind Convogo, a startup that developed an AI-powered platform designed to help executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and HR professionals streamline leadership assessments and feedback reporting. According to an OpenAI spokesperson, the company is not purchasing Convogo’s intellectual property or technology, but rather bringing the team on board to support its “AI cloud efforts.” The acquisition is structured as an all-stock deal, and the three co-founders—Matt Cooper, Evan Cater, and Mike Gillett—will join OpenAI as full-time employees. Convogo’s product will be discontinued following the acquisition. The company was born out of a personal question from Cooper’s mother, an executive coach, who wondered if AI could automate the time-consuming task of writing performance reports, allowing her to focus more on the human aspects of coaching. Over the past two years, Convogo grew to support “thousands” of coaches and formed partnerships with some of the world’s leading leadership development organizations. In an internal email announcing the acquisition, the Convogo team reflected on the core challenge they identified: the growing gap between the rapid pace of AI model innovation and the ability to turn those advances into meaningful, real-world results. “We’re convinced now more than ever that the key to bridging that gap lies in thoughtful, purpose-built experiences—like the ones we’ve created for coaches at Convogo,” they wrote. “That’s why we’re thrilled to join OpenAI to continue our mission of making AI accessible and useful to professionals across every industry.” This move marks OpenAI’s ninth acquisition in the past 12 months, according to PitchBook data. In most cases, the acquired products have either been integrated into OpenAI’s existing offerings—such as Sky, the AI interface for Mac, or Statsig, a product experimentation platform—or shut down entirely as the teams were absorbed, as seen with Roi, Context.ai, and Crossing Minds. The only exception is the acquisition of Jonny Ive’s io Products, which is continuing its product development in collaboration with OpenAI to build a new piece of AI hardware. The Convogo deal underscores a broader trend among top AI companies: using mergers and acquisitions not just to gain technology, but to rapidly scale talent and domain expertise. As the race to build the next generation of AI systems intensifies, access to skilled teams with real-world experience in applying AI to professional workflows has become a critical competitive advantage.