Email start-up Superhuman acquired by Grammarly in AI platform push

New York — Grammarly has acquired email efficiency tool Superhuman as part of the company’s push to build an artificial intelligence-powered productivity suite and diversify its business, its executives said in an interview.

The San Francisco-based companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman, once an exclusive email tool boasting a long wait-list for new users, was last valued at $825m in 2021, and now has an annual revenue of about $35m.

Grammarly’s acquisition of Superhuman follows its recent $1bn funding from General Catalyst, which gives it dry powder to create a collection of AI-powered workplace tools. Founded in 2005, the company has over 40-million daily users and an annual revenue exceeding $700m. It’s working on a name change with an ambition to expand beyond grammar correction.

Superhuman, with more than $110m in funding from investors including IVP and Andreessen Horowitz, has been trying to create an efficient email experience by integrating AI.

Dominant

The company claims its users send and respond to 72% more emails per hour, and the percentage of emails composed with its AI tools has increased fivefold in the past year. It also faces growing competition as email giants from Google to Microsoft are adding more AI features.

“Email continues to be the dominant communication tool for the world. Professionals spend something like three hours a day in their in boxes. It’s by far the most used work app, foundational to any productivity suite,” said Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Grammarly. “Superhuman is the obvious leading innovator in the space.”

Last year’s purchase of start-up Coda gave Grammarly a platform for AI agents to help users research, analyse and collaborate. Email, according to Mehrotra, who cofounded Coda, was the next logical step.

Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra will join Grammarly as part of the deal, along with over 100 Superhuman employees.

Integrate

“The Superhuman product, team and brand will continue,” Mehrotra said. “It’s a very well-used product by tens of thousands of people, and we want to see them continue to make progress.”

Vohra said that the deal will give Superhuman access to “significantly greater resources” and allow it to invest more heavily in AI, as well as expand into calendars, tasks and collaboration tools.

Mehrotra and Vohra see an opportunity to integrate Grammarly’s AI agents directly into Superhuman, and build the tools for enterprise customers.

The vision is for users to tap into a network of specialised agents, pulling data from across their digital workflows such as emails and documents, which will reduce time spent searching for information or crafting responses.

The company is also entering a crowded space of AI productivity tools, competing with tech giants such as Salesforce and a wave of start-ups.

Reuters