OpenAI has officially acquired Hiro Finance, a personal finance startup, as confirmed by founder Ethan Bloch on Monday and subsequently by OpenAI to TechCrunch. Hiro Finance garnered significant backing from prominent fintech venture capital firms, including Ribbit, General Catalyst, and Restive.
The financial terms of this acquisition were not disclosed, nor had Hiro Finance ever publicly revealed the total amount of funding it raised. Given that Hiro announced the cessation of its operations on April 20 and the deletion of all user data from its servers by May 13, this transaction is widely characterized as an "acquihire," primarily focused on integrating the team and technology.
In his public announcement, Bloch indicated that Hiro's employees would be transitioning to OpenAI alongside him. While a specific number of employees was not provided, LinkedIn profiles suggest approximately ten individuals were associated with the company. Bloch did not respond to requests for further comment.
Founded in 2023, Hiro launched its AI-powered financial planning tool for consumers approximately five months ago. The application allowed users to input personal financial data such as salary, debts, and monthly expenses, subsequently modeling various "what-if" scenarios to aid them in making informed financial decisions.
A key differentiator for Hiro was its specialized training in financial mathematics, including a feature that allowed users to verify the accuracy of calculations, as demonstrated by Bloch. This capability is particularly noteworthy given that while cutting-edge AI models have significantly improved in mathematical proficiency in recent years, they have historically struggled with complex numerical tasks.
This acquisition is particularly notable for several reasons, not least because of Ethan Bloch’s impressive entrepreneurial history. Bloch previously founded Digit, a neobank designed to help individuals automatically save money, which was successfully sold to Oportun in 2021 for over $200 million.
Furthermore, this isn't OpenAI's inaugural foray into acquiring financial technology. Considering OpenAI's positioning of ChatGPT as a valuable tool for business finance teams, it aligns with their strategy to bolster their expertise and talent in the financial sector. Whether OpenAI intends to develop a more specialized financial planning application remains to be seen.
Another potential angle for this acquihire could be an effort to increase OpenAI's appeal among users of OpenClaw, a popular agent for robo stock trading, who often show a preference for competitors like Claude. Intriguingly, Bloch himself developed and named his own autotrading OpenClaw agent "RoboBuffett," as he shared on LinkedIn.
Adding to Bloch's remarkable journey, he shared with Business Insider that Hiro was his 15th project, having embarked on his tech entrepreneurship path at the age of 13. He revealed that his first 13 ventures did not succeed. His 14th project, Flowtown, a social media SaaS tool launched in 2009, was sold for $4.5 million. He later sold Digit for approximately $230 million, and now his latest startup has been acquired by OpenAI, a company that has set unprecedented records for growth, fundraising, and is poised to potentially break IPO records.
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