Asana acquires StackAI for $75M to power human-agent teams

Asana announced Thursday the acquisition of StackAI, a no-code agent-builder, for $75 million. StackAI, part of Y Combinator's Winter '23 cohort, has raised just under $20 million, most recently a $16 million Series A from investors including Gradient, Epakon Capital, Lobby VC, LifeX Ventures, and Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch. Its platform allows users to build AI agents that integrate with existing business systems like Salesforce, Slack, and Gsuite, automating end-to-end processes without writing code. The founders, Tony Rosinol and Bernard Aceituno, will join Asana as part of the deal. StackAI has faced stiff competition from automation tools like Zapier and AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic, but Asana sees deep workflow integration as a key differentiator.

Asana framed the acquisition as a critical step in its broader AI pivot, aiming to become "the operating system for human-agent teams." The company already offers AI Studio (an agent builder) and AI Teammates (pre-built automations), and StackAI's technology will extend these to handle the most complex business processes. Asana has struggled on public markets since ChatGPT's launch, losing over half its market cap, and founder Dustin Moskovitz stepped down as CEO in March 2024. However, revenue has grown steadily, and CEO Dan Rogers expressed confidence: "This acquisition accelerates our roadmap and takes us into the next phase of human-agent work." By embedding AI agents deeply into corporate workflows, Asana hopes to rebound and compete with both pure-play automation vendors and AI labs.