OpenAI hasacquiredRoi, an AI-powered personal finance app. In keeping with a recent trend in the AI industry, onlythe CEO is making the jump.
Chief executive and co-founder Sujith Vishwajithannouncedthe acquisition on Friday, and a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch he is the only one of Roi’s four-person staff to join OpenAI. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.The company willwind down operations and end its service to customers on October 15.
The Roi deal marks the latest in a string ofacqui-hires from OpenAI this year, including Context.ai, Crossing Minds, and Alex.
Whileit’snot clear whether any of Roi’s technology will transfer over to OpenAI or which unitVishwajithwill join, the acquisition clearly aligns with OpenAI’s bet on personalization and life management as the next layer of AI products. Roi brings a specialized team that has already tried to solve personalization in finance at scale — a challenge whose lessons can be applied more broadly.
New York-basedRoiwas founded in2022and has raised $3.6 million inearly-stagefundingfrom investors like Balaji Srinivasan, Spark Capital, Gradient Ventures, andSpacecadetVentures, according toPitchBookdata. Its mission was to aggregate a user’s financial footprint, including stocks, crypto, DeFi, real-estate, and NFTs, into one app that can track funds, provide insights, and help people make trades.
“We started Roi 3 years ago to make investing accessible to everyone by building the most personalized financial experience,” Vishwajith wrote in a post on X. “Along the way we realized personalizationisn’tjust the future of finance.It’sthe future of software.”
Beyond tracking trades,Roi gave usersaccess to a financially savvy AI companionthat responded in ways that made sense for them.When signing up, users could personalize Roi by providing information like what they do for a living and how they wanted Roi to respond to them.
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In one telling examplethat Roi posted on X, the sample user wrote: “Talk to me likeI’ma Gen-Z kid with brain rot. Use as little words as possible and roast me as much as youwantIdon’tmind.”In response to a query about the status of the user’s portfolio, Roi replied: “Suje, you got cookedlilbro. Cause of the tariff announcements, you took an L today of $32,459.12…Based on your risk preference this might be an opportunity to buy the dip.”
The exchange highlights the philosophy behind Roi and its co-founder — that software shouldn’t just provide generic answers but should adapt, learn, and communicate in ways that feel personal, human, and most importantly, keepyou engaged.
As the Roi team wrote in a blog post: “The products we use every day won’t remain static, predetermined experiences. They’ll become adaptive, deeply personal companions that understand us, learn from us, and evolve with us.”
That vision dovetails with OpenAI’s existing consumer efforts, includingPulse, which generates personalized news and content reports for users as they sleep;theSoraapp,a TikTok competitor filled with AI-generated content, including personal cameos from users; andInstant Checkout, a feature that lets users shop and make purchases directly in ChatGPT.
Thedealalso comes as OpenAI beefs up its consumer applications team,led by former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo.It’sa further signal that OpenAIisn’tjust trying to be an APIprovider, butwants tobuildits own end-user apps. Roi’s talent and tech could slot right into these apps and help make them more adaptive.
Vishwajith, alongside his co-founder Chip Davis, used to work at Airbnb, where he developed a knack for optimizinguser behaviorto drive revenue.By hisaccount, asimple change of 25 lines of code led to $10+ million inadditionalcash.
Being able to bring in meaningful revenue via consumer apps is more important than ever to OpenAI as it continues to burn throughbillions on data centers andinfrastructureto power its models.
