OpenAI quietly bought a slide-making startup — and is now pointing ChatGPT at PowerPoint
OpenAI has acquired NextSlide, a startup whose product turned prompts, notes, documents or research into polished, editable presentations. The deal became public on August 8 through NextSlide's website and its founder's post; founder Ahmed Beshry wrote that the acquisition actually closed earlier this year and the announcement was a few months late. Financial terms were not disclosed. The team has joined OpenAI and is now working on ChatGPT. Beshry previously co-founded Caper AI, the smart shopping-cart company that Instacart bought in 2021.
Why it mattersOpenAI keeps buying small teams that each own one office chore, and slides are the chore most people would happily pay to never do again. Once slide generation sits inside ChatGPT, the competitor is not another chatbot — it is PowerPoint and Google Slides, which is a much larger and much better defended piece of ground. Worth noting the timing too: the deal closed months ago and only surfaced now, a reminder that acquisition news tells you where a company already went, not where it is heading.
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