Exclusive-Grammarly acquires email startup Superhuman in AI platform push

It’s working on a name change with an ambition to expand beyond grammar correction. Superhuman, with over $110 million in funding from investors including IVP and Andreessen Horowitz, has been trying to create an efficient email experience by integrating AI. The company claims its users send and respond to 72% more emails per hour, and the percentage of emails composed with its AI tools has increased fivefold in the past year. It also faces growing competition as email giants from Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) are adding more AI features. "Email continues to be the dominant communication tool for the world.
Professionals spend something like three hours a day in their inboxes. It’s by far the most used work app, foundational to any productivity suite," said Shashir Mehrotra, CEO of Grammarly. "Superhuman is the obvious leading innovator in the space." Last year’s purchase of startup Coda gave Grammarly a platform for AI agents to help users research, analyze, and collaborate. Email, according to Mehrotra who co-founded Coda, was the next logical step. Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra will join Grammarly as part of the deal, along with over 100 Superhuman employees.
“The Superhuman product, team, and brand will continue,” Mehrotra said. “It’s a very well-used product by tens of thousands of people, and we want to see them continue to make progress.” Vohra said that the deal will give Superhuman access to “significantly greater resources” and allow it to invest more heavily in AI, as well as expand into calendars, tasks, and collaboration tools. Mehrotra and Vohra see an opportunity to integrate Grammarly’s AI agents directly into Superhuman, and build the tools for enterprise customers. The vision is for users to tap into a network of specialized agents, pulling data from across their digital workflows such as emails and documents, which will reduce time spent searching for information or crafting responses. The company is also entering a crowded space of AI productivity tools, competing with tech giants such as Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) and a wave of startups.