Startups & Funding
Asana acquires StackAI for $75 million to boost AI agent tools
Asana has acquired workflow automation company StackAI for $75 million, aiming to integrate the technology to support collaboration between human workers and AI agents.
Work management software company Asana has acquired StackAI, a workflow automation company, for $75 million. The transaction was announced on Thursday afternoon. As part of the acquisition, StackAI founders Tony Rosinol and Bernard Aceituno will join Asana to accelerate the company’s product roadmap.
Asana is framing the acquisition as part of a broader effort to position itself as an AI-native workplace platform—which refers to software built with artificial intelligence as a core component. Specifically, Asana seeks to build its platform into the operating system for human-agent teams, defined as the collaboration between human workers and AI agents. The company aims to use StackAI’s technology to agentify complex business processes end-to-end. Dan Rogers, the CEO of Asana, stated that the acquisition accelerates the company’s roadmap and moves it into the next phase of human-agent work. Rogers noted that they are already seeing momentum with AI Teammates and AI Studio, adding: “We’re already seeing real momentum with AI Teammates and AI Studio … StackAI now lets them go further, agentifying the most complex business processes end-to-end.”
While users are familiar with Asana’s work management system, the company has released several AI-oriented products in recent years, including the AI Studio automation builder and the AI Teammates series of pre-built agents. StackAI, which was built as an AI workflow-automation system, designs agents to operate within existing business systems, pulling in data from systems like Salesforce, Slack, and Gsuite.
StackAI was part of the Y Combinator Winter ’23 cohort. The startup has faced competition from automation tools like Zapier as well as AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. According to PitchBook data, StackAI had raised just under $20 million in total funding. Most of this capital came from a $16 million Series A round. Investors in StackAI include:
- Gradient
- Epakon Capital
- Lobby VC
- LifeX Ventures
- Guillermo Rauch (the CEO of Vercel)
The acquisition comes as Asana faces pressure in the public markets. The company has lost more than half of its market cap value since the introduction of ChatGPT. This trend intensified following the departure of former CEO Dustin Moskovitz last March. Despite these market cap losses, Asana’s leadership remains confident that its human-agent products will enable the company to rebound.
Why it matters
Asana is betting that integrating AI agent technology will help it recover from market cap losses and successfully transition into an AI-native workplace platform.