Ollie, a startup whose mission was to deliver an AI assistant that respected its users’ privacy, says it will shut down in a week. Co-founder and CEO Bill Lennon took to X on Friday to deliver the news, confirming the app will officially shut down on November 6.
Ollie AI assistant (Credits: TechCrunch)
Ollie AI Assistant Shutdown: Why It Is Closing
“I’m really proud of what we accomplished,” Lennon said. “We built an incredible personal assistant with a small team, and learned a ton. I’m grateful to our amazing team, our users, our investors, and everyone who supported us on this journey.”
He blamed the pressures of the burgeoning AI industry: “We got close, but ultimately couldn’t keep up. With Muse, Instinct, and others entering the space, it became harder to stand out, grow, and raise the capital we needed to succeed.”
What Ollie Offered
Ollie, which announced a $7.5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures in September, ran a subscription-based model focused on helping families stay connected and organized. The app connected to a user’s email and calendar, with integrated functions for appointment bookings, meal planning, and bill payments. The company had planned to eventually move into household budgeting.
Crucially, Ollie was one of the first mainstream apps to achieve SOC 2, a privacy compliance standard attained via an independent audit. But privacy has never been a hugely profitable corner of the tech industry — and the text-based AI assistant market has exploded over the past year as increasingly powerful models made such apps far more useful for daily tasks.
Lennon said customers will receive instructions on how to export their data and receive refunds in the coming days.
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Source: TechCrunch — read the full story there.
