Asana acquires no-code agent-builder StackAI

Asana has acquired workflow automation company StackAI for $75 million, part of a larger effort to position itself as an AI-native workplace platform. StackAI founders Tony Rosinol and Bernard Aceituno will join Asana as part of the acquisition.

Asana framed the acquisition as part of its broader AI pivot, in which it aims to build its platform into “the operating system for human agent teams.”

The announcement was made Thursday afternoon, coinciding with Asana’s earnings and investor call.

Built as an AI workflow automation system, StackAI designs agents that can operate within existing business systems, pulling data from systems like Salesforce, Slack, and Gsuite. The company is part of Y Combinator’s Winter ’23 cohort and has faced stiff competition from automation tools like Zapier and AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.

According to PitchBook data, StackAI had raised just under $20 million, most of it in a recent $16 million Series A round. That round included funding from Gradient, Epakon Capital, Lobby VC, LifeX Ventures and Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch.

While users are probably most familiar with Asana’s work management system, the company has released a number of AI-oriented products in recent years, most notably the AI ​​Studio Agent Builder and AI teammates suite of pre-built automations. While equivalent tools are available from major labs, Asana sees their deep integration into existing business workflows as a key benefit, allowing it to distill context and training data that would otherwise be unavailable.

Asana has struggled in the public markets during the AI ​​era, losing more than half of its market cap value since the introduction of ChatGPT – a spiral that worsened with the departure of founder Dustin Moskovitz as CEO last March. But sales have continued to grow steadily, and the new leadership is confident that the human products will allow the company to recover.

“This acquisition accelerates our roadmap and moves us into the next phase of human-agent work,” CEO Dan Rogers said in a statement. “We are already seeing real momentum with AI Teammates and AI Studio… StackAI is now allowing them to go further, facilitating the most complex business processes end-to-end.”