Digital
OpenAI acquires presentation startup NextSlide, team joins ChatGPT
NextSlide founder Ahmed Beshry says team will develop AI products at OpenAI
MUMBAI: Slide into the AI era. OpenAI has acquired presentation startup NextSlide, with its team moving to the artificial intelligence company to work on ChatGPT and related products.
NextSlide founder Ahmed Beshry announced the acquisition, saying the transaction was completed earlier this year but was disclosed only recently. The financial terms of the deal have not been revealed.
Founded a little over a year ago, NextSlide set out to make presentation creation easier for people without formal design skills. Its product could turn prompts, notes, documents and research into editable presentations, helping users move from an idea to a finished deck with less manual work.
Beshry said the startup’s broader mission was to make visual communication more accessible and help people present ideas more clearly. At OpenAI, the team will continue pursuing that objective by working on AI products designed to help users create and communicate.
The NextSlide website now carries a message from Beshry confirming the team’s move to OpenAI and thanking users who helped shape the product.
“To everyone who created a deck, shared feedback, or supported us along the way: thank you for helping shape NextSlide. We’re grateful for the journey and excited for what comes next,” Beshry said.
The acquisition adds presentation and visual communication capabilities to OpenAI’s growing product ambitions around ChatGPT. It also reflects the broader push to make generative AI useful across everyday knowledge work, from drafting and research to creating polished visual material.
Beshry brings previous startup experience to the move. Before founding NextSlide, he co-founded Caper AI, a smart-cart and cashier-less checkout startup that was acquired by Instacart in 2021.
For NextSlide, the acquisition closes a short but eventful startup journey. For OpenAI, the team brings experience in turning unstructured information into visual communication, potentially giving ChatGPT another way to help users move from a blank slide to a finished story.
