OpenAI has acquired NextSlide, a startup that developed AI tools to convert prompts, notes, and documents into editable slide presentations. The NextSlide team has joined the ChatGPT project.

Neither company has disclosed the acquisition’s financial terms. NextSlide Founder Ahmed Beshry stated on LinkedIn that the announcement was made several months after the deal closed earlier this year. According to his LinkedIn profile, Beshry founded NextSlide in April 2025 and led the company for eleven months before joining OpenAI in March 2026. Neither company has disclosed the team size, headquarters location, or whether NextSlide secured external funding.

OpenAI and NextSlide have not addressed the reason for the delayed announcement. NextSlide is no longer available as a standalone product. The website now displays only Beshry’s farewell message, and the tool has been discontinued for all users.

What did NextSlide do? NextSlide allowed users to input a prompt, notes, documents, or research and receive a presentation deck ready for editing and delivery. The product targeted individuals without design expertise by transforming written content into polished, editable presentations. In his note, Beshry stated that the company’s goal is to make visual communication more accessible, not just to accelerate slide creation.

Fits a familiar OpenAI pattern: Analysts characterize the transaction as a typical OpenAI acqui-hire, with a small team and product integrated into an existing product line rather than maintained as a separate brand. The deal occurs during a broader OpenAI reorganization, according to one report. Fidji Simo, then CEO of Applications, told staff at a March 2026 all-hands meeting that the company was “orienting aggressively” toward high-productivity use cases.

Open questions: No timeline has been provided for when NextSlide’s capabilities will be integrated into ChatGPT. The terms of the deal remain undisclosed, the announcement is retroactive by several months, and there is no public roadmap or information regarding the status of current NextSlide customers.

Wider consolidation in the AI presentation space: NextSlide’s acquisition by OpenAI reflects ongoing consolidation in the AI slide-generation sector, though not all companies are following this path. Gamma, its main competitor, raised $68 million in Series B funding at a $2.1 billion valuation in November 2025 and remains independent. Instead of selling, Gamma continues to grow. Some analysts consider it as the leading specialist for prompt-to-deck workflows, particularly in areas where ChatGPT has yet to match its polish, brand control, and export reliability.

In contrast, other companies have exited the market: Tome, an early competitor, discontinued its consumer presentation product in March 2025, and its team joined Lightfield, a B2B sales-intelligence startup. NextSlide’s deal is part of a series of 17 OpenAI acquisitions over three years, including six in the first quarter of 2026. This strategy has allowed OpenAI to expand its presence in presentation software and other categories through acqui-hires rather than relying solely on internal development.

The move also lands amid a shifting OpenAI-Microsoft relationship, the two companies whose fortunes have been most entangled in enterprise AI. Microsoft has reportedly replaced OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s models in flagship apps such as Word and Excel with its own in-house models. Bill Gates’ company has instructed its sales team to directly critique both companies’ AI products to customers.

Despite this growing competition, OpenAI has expanded its presence within Microsoft’s software. In May 2026, OpenAI launched a beta ChatGPT add-in for PowerPoint, embedding its chatbot as a sidebar that builds and edits slides for both free and paid users. The add-in allows users to start from notes, documents, spreadsheets, prompts, or existing decks. Using that the users ask ChatGPT to create slides, rewrite content, improve structure, or polish drafts without leaving PowerPoint. OpenAI made this feature broadly available to free-tier users as well as paid Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscribers. This contrasts with Microsoft’s Copilot, which fewer than 4.5% of its 450 million Microsoft 365 customers currently pay for. As a result, OpenAI is both competing with Microsoft for the AI productivity layer and operating within Microsoft’s own product as a plug-in.

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