OpenAI has purchased Roi, an AI-driven app focused on personal finance. Reflecting a recent pattern in the AI sector, only the company’s CEO will be joining OpenAI.
Sujith Vishwajith, Roi’s chief executive and co-founder, shared news of the acquisition on Friday. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, he is the sole member of Roi’s four-person team moving to OpenAI. The financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed. Roi will cease operations and discontinue its service for users on October 15.
This acquisition is the latest in a series of talent-focused purchases by OpenAI this year, following deals with Context.ai, Crossing Minds, and Alex.
It’s still uncertain if any of Roi’s technology will be integrated into OpenAI or which division Vishwajith will join. However, the move fits with OpenAI’s focus on personalization and life management as emerging areas for AI products. Roi’s team has already tackled the challenge of scaling personalized finance, offering insights that could be valuable in broader contexts.
Founded in New York in 2022, Roi secured $3.6 million in seed funding from investors such as Balaji Srinivasan, Spark Capital, Gradient Ventures, and Spacecadet Ventures, according to PitchBook. The app aimed to consolidate a user’s financial data—including stocks, crypto, DeFi, real estate, and NFTs—into a single platform for tracking assets, generating insights, and facilitating trades.
“We launched Roi three years ago to democratize investing by creating the most tailored financial experience possible,” Vishwajith posted on X. “Over time, we realized that personalization isn’t just the future of finance—it’s the future of all software.”
In addition to monitoring trades, Roi offered users an AI assistant with financial expertise that could interact in a way suited to each individual. During onboarding, users could customize Roi by sharing details about their profession and preferred communication style.
For example, in a post on X, Roi shared a scenario where a user requested: “Talk to me like I’m a Gen-Z kid with brain rot. Use as little words as possible and roast me as much as you want I don’t mind.” When asked about their portfolio, Roi responded: “Suje, you got cooked lil bro. 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.”
This interaction illustrates Roi’s and its co-founder’s belief that software should not just offer standard responses, but instead adapt, learn, and communicate in a way that feels personal, relatable, and keeps users engaged.
As the Roi team expressed in a blog post: “The tools we use every day won’t stay as fixed, pre-designed experiences. They’ll evolve into responsive, highly personalized companions that understand us, learn from us, and grow alongside us.”
This vision aligns with OpenAI’s current consumer initiatives, such as Pulse, which curates personalized news and content summaries for users overnight; the Sora app, a TikTok alternative featuring AI-created content and user cameos; and Instant Checkout, a feature enabling direct shopping and purchases within ChatGPT.
The acquisition also coincides with OpenAI expanding its consumer applications division, now led by former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. This move further signals OpenAI’s ambition to go beyond being just an API provider and to develop its own consumer-facing applications. Roi’s expertise and technology could help make these apps more responsive and user-centric.
Vishwajith and his co-founder Chip Davis previously worked at Airbnb, where Vishwajith honed his skills in optimizing user behavior to increase revenue. By his account, a simple tweak of 25 lines of code resulted in over $10 million in additional revenue.
As OpenAI continues to invest heavily in data centers and infrastructure to support its models, generating significant revenue from consumer applications has become increasingly crucial for the company.