Crossing Minds, a startup that provides AI recommendation systems to e-commerce businesses, said on Thursday that its team is joining OpenAI.
The startup was backed by Index Ventures, Shopify, Plug and Play, and Radical Ventures, and had raised more than $13.5 million across multiple rounds, according to Crunchbase.
Crossing Minds largely worked with e-commerce companies to improve their personalization and recommendation systems. The company claims it studies customers’ on-site behavior data to gather insights on their shopping preferences without compromising privacy.
“Joining OpenAI allows us to bring our work — and our values — into a mission we deeply respect: to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. We’re thrilled to bring our experience and energy to a team that’s setting the direction for the future of AI. We’re excited to learn, to contribute, and to help shape what’s next,” the startup’s co-founders wrote in a post on its website.
Alexandre Robicquet, one of the co-founders, has updated his bio on LinkedIn, which now reads “Research, Post-training and Agents at OpenAI.” It is not clear if all of Crossing Minds’ team is joining OpenAI.
Crossing Minds’ website also says that the company won’t take up any more clients. Per its archived “About” page, Crossing Mind previously said it was trusted by Intuit, Anthropic, Udacity and Chanel.
AI companies have built a plethora of tools to help customers shop. Google and Perplexity have launched AI features to improve recommendations, while startups like Daydream have received massive investments to launch AI shopping assistants.
Earlier this year, OpenAI updated ChatGPT to provide recommendations, images, and reviews for items its users ask questions about.
OpenAI didn’t immediately return a request for comment.