Superhuman buys GPTZero, adding $30 million AI detection startup

Superhuman, the productivity company formerly known as Grammarly, acquired AI detection startup GPTZero, adding a business with $30 million in annual recurring revenue and 19 million registered users.

"When you're buying a business like this, the people come first," said Shishir Mehrotra, chief executive officer of Superhuman.

GPTZero was co-founded in 2023 by Edward Tian and Alex Cui. Tian, now 26, built the detection tool as a senior at Princeton University before it went viral. The startup is valued at more than $88 million, according to PitchBook, and counts Uncork Capital, Neo, Footwork and Jack Altman among its backers. As part of the deal, Tian and Cui will join Superhuman to lead a team focused on authenticity, and GPTZero's 30 employees will also move to the company. The companies declined to disclose the financial terms.

The acquisition marks Superhuman's fourth major deal, following purchases of the productivity assistant Coda, the email app Superhuman and the AI spreadsheet tool Rows. Mehrotra, who previously spent years at Google, said he sees Superhuman's 40 million daily users as a "trampoline" to help acquired companies scale more quickly. GPTZero will be accessible within Superhuman Go, an AI assistant that operates across websites and apps, while continuing to operate as a standalone product.

Deciphering which content is and is not AI-generated is especially critical in education, which accounts for roughly a third of the more than $700 million in annual revenue generated by Superhuman's flagship writing assistant Grammarly, Mehrotra said. Professional users in fields such as consulting, recruiting and journalism generate the remainder.

"GPTZero started with the mission of preserving what's human," Tian said. "Now we need to preserve critical thinking." The deal marks consolidation in the AI content authentication sector, where startups have proliferated since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Superhuman's acquisition provides GPTZero with distribution across a user base of 40 million daily active users, potentially accelerating adoption beyond its current education-heavy customer mix.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.