Home News team productivity
AI Leader Grammarly to Acquire Coda, Bring on New CEO
Dec 17, 2024
Grammarly, a leader in AI communication tools, announced its acquisition of productivity platform Coda. This move aligns with Grammarly’s vision to evolve into a comprehensive AI productivity platform, integrating Coda's flexible tools and AI solutions. Coda’s CEO Shishir Mehrotra will take the role of Grammarly’s new CEO, bringing his vast experience in scaling platforms like YouTube. The acquisition will enable enterprises to streamline workflows, harness company knowledge via Coda Brain, and increase productivity through AI agents. Together, Grammarly and Coda aim to redefine workplace productivity, empowering organizations with seamless AI solutions.



SAN FRANCISCO---Grammarly, the trusted AI assistant, today announced its intent to acquire productivity platform Coda, with Coda’s CEO and Co-Founder Shishir Mehrotra set to become the new CEO of Grammarly.

The addition of Coda’s flexible and powerful AI tools and surfaces aims to transform Grammarly into an AI productivity platform for apps and agents where customers can unlock access to company knowledge, generative AI chat, a productivity suite, and capable, trusted AI agents to work smarter and faster.

“For the past 15 years, Grammarly has been building an AI super highway with the capacity and expertise to do so much more than writing assistance for our customers,” said Alex Shevchenko, Grammarly co-founder. “The acquisition of Coda is a big step toward achieving our vision of a world where humans and AI work together everywhere work happens. We’re on a new mission to redefine productivity for the AI era.”

“We have a massive opportunity to reinvent productivity as we know it, and Grammarly and Coda can pursue that vision faster together,” said Shishir Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO of Coda. “Grammarly is a beloved software product used by millions of people every day. Combining Grammarly’s trusted AI assistant with the intelligence and flexibility of Coda can give our customers the productivity gains they’re looking for across their entire organization.”

AI is redefining how people work

The AI revolution is set to redefine every business application and workflow, fundamentally changing how people work. Deloitte predicts that 25% of enterprises using generative AI are expected to deploy AI agents in 2025, growing to 50% by 2027. Today, 10% of organizations already use AI agents, more than half plan to use them in the next year, and 82% plan to integrate them within the next three years, according to a Capgemini survey of executives at large enterprises.

With this acquisition, Grammarly is increasingly focused on the future of how AI agents can not only improve applications but also benefit the entire enterprise with increased productivity and better business outcomes.

Complementary products bring more value to customers

Grammarly has been at the forefront of AI, understands the infrastructure needed to deploy it at scale, and has proven that customers value seamless integration across applications. Grammarly’s AI agents, including authorship, plagiarism detection, and proofreading, are used across 500,000 applications and websites by over 40 million people daily and 50,000 organizations such as Atlassian, Ford, and Chevron.

Coda has spent the past few years perfecting Coda Docs, a powerful, flexible productivity suite that has unseated incumbent rivals at leading companies. Most recently, they’ve introduced Coda Brain, which unlocks company knowledge across 800+ enterprise applications. Coda empowers over 50,000 teams at renowned companies like Figma, DoorDash, Square, and The New York Times. Its integrated platform unites teams, improves alignment, and optimizes budgets, resulting in lower costs and increased productivity.

What’s ahead for Grammarly with Coda

Grammarly and Coda products will continue to work the way customers know and love. Additionally, Grammarly is focused on making its AI assistant smarter and more contextually aware with company knowledge from Coda Brain, enabling permission-aware connections with other systems and applications, from email and documents to CRM and project trackers. Coda Brain is trained to know which internal applications it has permission to access.

Grammarly will continue to work across enterprise applications and intends to unify its assistant with Coda Docs to provide a dedicated surface where customers can write with AI from start to finish.

In the future, the company’s vision is to redefine productivity with AI and humans seamlessly working together across all the places everyone works. The goal is to bring Grammarly and Coda together as an AI productivity platform, ready with the skills, tools, and knowledge customers need to work smarter and faster.

“I believe this acquisition will create a market leader in applied AI for enterprises, combining two companies with complementary strengths into a platform that empowers the modern workforce,” said Hemant Taneja, CEO and Managing Director of General Catalyst. “We talk with Fortune 500 leaders every day who understand the potential of AI but struggle to harness it fully. Grammarly is now building the products that leverage AI to boost productivity, reduce costs, and make workers lives’ easier, in platforms they’re already using today."

Welcome Shishir Mehrotra as CEO of Grammarly

Mehrotra is a 25+-year tech veteran with a track record of building new platforms that redefine and lead categories. He is currently the CEO and co-founder of the business productivity and AI platform Coda and has grown the platform to serve millions of users and tens of thousands of teams.

Before founding Coda, he served as YouTube’s Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer — helping grow YouTube to the world’s largest video destination, one of Google’s largest and fastest-growing businesses, and the platform of choice for a new generation of creators. As part of the acquisition, he will also join the Grammarly board of directors.

Learn more

  • Read blog post from Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Grammarly CEO

  • Read blog post from Shishir Mehrotra, Coda CEO


About Grammarly

Grammarly is the trusted AI assistant for communication and productivity, helping over 40 million people and 50,000 organizations do their best work. Companies like Atlassian, Databricks, and Zoom rely on Grammarly to brainstorm, compose, and enhance communication that moves work forward. Grammarly works where you work, integrating seamlessly with over 500,000 applications and websites. Learn more at grammarly.com/about.

About Coda

Coda is the all-in-one workspace for businesses. Coda starts as a familiar blinking cursor and a hub to consolidate your team’s work. It also contains a set of powerful building blocks that enable teams to work in their unique way — and stack into customizable solutions that fit every team. From 1:1s to team meeting rituals, to company-wide planning processes, companies like Figma, DoorDash, The New York Times, and Square use Coda to codify their best ways of working and reduce tool fatigue. Coda was launched to the general public in early 2019 and is used by over 50,000 teams globally. Coda is a distributed company with offices in Seattle, San Francisco, and Mountain View, CA, and is backed by top investment firms such as Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, and General Catalyst. Learn more at www.coda.io.
You may also like...
Follow us: