OpenAI to Acquire Product Testing Startup Statsig

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has announced one of its largest acquisitions yet with a $1.1 billion all-stock deal to purchase product testing startup Statsig. The move highlights OpenAI’s aggressive expansion strategy as it continues to grow its AI ecosystem and enhance its product development pipeline.

Statsig, founded in 2021 by former Meta engineering leader Vijaye Raji, builds tools that allow software developers to test, monitor, and evaluate new features before releasing them to users. Its platform helps teams analyze performance data, experiment with different product variations, and flag potential issues, ensuring smoother product rollouts. According to the company’s website, its technology has been used by teams at OpenAI itself as well as by other well-known firms such as Eventbrite, SoundCloud, and various Silicon Valley startups.

Earlier this year, Statsig raised $100 million in funding, reaching a valuation of $1.1 billion—exactly the price tag OpenAI has now agreed to pay in stock. For a four-year-old startup, the acquisition marks a dramatic rise and underscores the growing importance of feature testing and rapid iteration in the age of AI-driven software.

As part of the acquisition, OpenAI announced that Vijaye Raji will take on a new role as Chief Technology Officer of Applications. He will report directly to Fidji Simo, the former Instacart CEO who recently became OpenAI’s head of Applications.

OpenAI emphasized Raji’s dual strengths as both an entrepreneur and a seasoned engineering leader. Having spent a decade at Meta, where he managed large-scale consumer engineering, and later founding Statsig, he brings a blend of vision and execution ability. At OpenAI, he will oversee product engineering for ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI’s AI coding assistant. His responsibilities will include managing core systems, infrastructure, and product integrity—critical functions as OpenAI scales to serve hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

In a statement, OpenAI noted that Raji’s expertise will be pivotal for “scaling our next generation of products.” His appointment signals the company’s intent to double down on product quality, speed of delivery, and reliability, especially as ChatGPT’s user base continues to soar.

The Statsig deal is the latest in a string of high-profile acquisitions by OpenAI in 2024 and 2025. In July, the company completed a massive $6.5 billion acquisition of io Products, a startup co-founded by Jony Ive, the famed former Apple design chief. That acquisition was intended to accelerate OpenAI’s push into AI hardware development, blending cutting-edge AI models with intuitive device design.

OpenAI also made smaller but strategic acquisitions. Earlier this year, it acquired Multi, a New York-based startup that specialized in video-first collaboration and screen-sharing tools for Mac. The entire Multi team joined OpenAI, though the platform itself was shut down in mid-2024. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed.

Another important acquisition was Rockset, a real-time indexing and analytics database startup. By integrating Rockset’s technology, OpenAI has strengthened its retrieval infrastructure essentially the systems that power fast, accurate information access across ChatGPT and other products.

Before these, in 2023, OpenAI acquired Global Illumination, a New York-based AI design studio whose creative and technical expertise has been applied directly to the development of ChatGPT.

Not all acquisition attempts were successful. The company had tried to acquire Windsurf, an AI coding startup, for about $3 billion, but that deal collapsed before completion.

Taken together, these deals illustrate OpenAI’s determination to expand not just vertically by improving its core AI models but also horizontally, by building out the infrastructure, tools, and devices needed to deliver AI seamlessly into everyday life.

The acquisition spree has been underpinned by strong financial backing. Earlier this year, OpenAI finalized a deal to raise $40 billion in new funding at a $300 billion valuation, cementing its place among the most highly valued technology companies in the world. Reports now suggest that OpenAI is preparing to allow current and former employees to sell shares at a staggering $500 billion valuation, which would put it on par with some of the most powerful tech giants globally.

This funding and valuation growth reflects investors’ confidence not only in the commercial potential of ChatGPT but also in OpenAI’s broader ecosystem of AI products, including Codex for coding and DALL·E for image generation.

OpenAI’s aggressive strategy comes at a time of rapid user growth. As of August 2025, ChatGPT had surpassed 700 million weekly active users globally, a milestone that underscores its role as one of the most widely adopted consumer technology platforms in recent memory.

The surge in users coincided with the release of GPT-5, OpenAI’s most advanced model to date, which has been fully integrated into ChatGPT. The upgrade brought improvements in reasoning, contextual understanding, and conversational fluency, making the platform even more attractive to both casual users and businesses.

ChatGPT is no longer just a consumer-facing tool. Large corporations such as BNY Mellon, Morgan Stanley, SoftBank, T-Mobile, Figma, Intercom, and Lowe’s have started deploying GPT-powered tools across departments. OpenAI also reported that over 5 million users are now subscribed to ChatGPT’s business-focused products, underscoring the platform’s growing role in enterprise workflows.

The acquisition of Statsig ties directly into this explosive growth. As more users and businesses rely on ChatGPT and Codex, the pressure to ship reliable, high-quality features quickly has intensified. Statsig’s tools allow engineering teams to test new features at scale, measure user responses, and ensure stability before rolling them out more broadly. This capacity for “experimentation at scale” will help OpenAI maintain its reputation for reliability while also innovating at a rapid pace.

By bringing Statsig’s technology and leadership in-house, OpenAI can accelerate its product development cycles and ensure that future versions of ChatGPT, Codex, and other tools remain stable, scalable, and secure.

OpenAI’s acquisition of Statsig marks another bold step in its transformation from a pure research lab into a diversified technology powerhouse. With strong financial backing, a soaring user base, and a growing suite of technologies, the company is positioning itself at the center of the next wave of computing.

For Statsig, the acquisition represents a chance to scale its technology far beyond what it could have achieved independently. For OpenAI, it is an investment in speed, reliability, and quality—factors that will matter even more as AI becomes embedded into every corner of business and daily life.