OpenAI acquires NextSlide as ChatGPT expands into PowerPoint

Why it matters

NextSlide adds a repeat founder and a team focused on editable visual documents as OpenAI turns ChatGPT into a tool for completing work inside Microsoft Office.

Ahmed Beshry has sold NextSlide, the AI presentation maker he founded a little over a year ago, to OpenAI. The acquisition announcement says NextSlide's team has already moved to OpenAI and is working on ChatGPT.

Financial terms were not disclosed. NextSlide also did not identify the employees joining OpenAI or specify which parts of its technology will be incorporated into ChatGPT.

The deal gives Beshry a second startup exit. He previously co-founded Caper, a Y Combinator-backed developer of computer vision-equipped shopping carts that Instacart acquired in October 2021. The transaction was valued at $350 million in cash and stock, according to The Information.

From shopping carts to editable slides

Beshry and his Caper co-founders entered Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch with a plan to package cameras, sensors and computer vision into shopping carts that could identify products and automate checkout. Caper's approach avoided the expense and disruption of installing an Amazon Go-style system throughout an entire store.

Instacart bought Caper on October 19th, 2021, adding its hardware and global team as Instacart expanded beyond grocery delivery into technology for physical stores. Caper's carts remain part of Instacart's connected-store business.

NextSlide took Beshry into a different product category while preserving his focus on interfaces that make AI usable by people without specialized technical skills. NextSlide accepted prompts, notes, documents and research, then turned that material into polished presentations whose slides remained editable.

Beshry wrote in the acquisition note that NextSlide began with the belief that communicating an idea should not depend on a person's ability to design slides. The team aimed to reduce the design work required to produce a presentation while retaining the control that business users expect from conventional slide software.

That editing layer is important. Presentation generators can produce attractive images of slides, but business decks usually require repeated changes to text, charts, layouts, branding and source material. NextSlide was built around creating a usable document rather than a static visual output.

OpenAI already has a PowerPoint product

The acquisition lands directly on a product surface OpenAI has already entered. ChatGPT for PowerPoint runs inside Microsoft PowerPoint and can create presentations from source material, add or revise slides, assess a deck's structure and adapt it for a particular audience while preserving editable slide elements.

Those capabilities substantially overlap with NextSlide's stated product. OpenAI's own documentation also lists template adherence, formatting, chart creation and advanced slide management among the areas where its PowerPoint product may remain limited or under development. NextSlide gives OpenAI a team that spent the past year working on the same document-generation and editing problems.

The fit extends beyond PowerPoint. NextSlide framed presentations as a way to turn research and ideas into work that can be taught, shared or used to persuade. OpenAI has been pushing ChatGPT toward completing multi-step work across documents, spreadsheets, software and other professional tools. Presentations are another output format where a text response alone is insufficient: users need structure, visual hierarchy and a file they can continue editing.

Beshry joins OpenAI after a fast second build

NextSlide's short life makes the transaction look closer to a team and product acquisition than the purchase of a mature standalone software business. The acquisition note contains no revenue, customer or funding figures, and NextSlide had operated for only a little over a year.

Beshry brings experience building and selling applied AI products in two very different markets. Caper put computer vision into grocery carts and required integrations with retailers, payment systems and physical hardware. NextSlide focused on generative AI inside a familiar office workflow. Both products centered on reducing the specialist work required to complete an everyday task.

At OpenAI, Beshry and the NextSlide team will continue working on products for creation and communication, according to the announcement. OpenAI now has direct control of the team behind NextSlide as it develops ChatGPT from a conversational interface into software that produces finished, editable work.