Founded back in 2009 (I could also say “all the way back” because 15 years ago feels ages, for many of us), it didn’t take long for Grammarly to hit its big-time popular streak. By 2011, approximately 300,000 students were registered users and more than 250 universities were customers. By 2013, Grammarly hit its 3 million registered users mark. And in 2014 and 2015 respectively, Grammarly launched its Microsoft Office plugins and a free extension for Google Chrome, marking its switch to a freemium model.
Today, 40 million people (and counting) use Grammarly, and it’s trusted by 50,000+ organizations (including the likes of Zoom, Salesforce, Databricks, Atlassian and Upwork). Quite the journey, if you ask us.
What Grammarly has also done is navigate closer to — not necessarily as a full rebrand, but very much a conscious adaptation — becoming a responsible, well-trusted AI writing assistant.
“From instantly creating a first draft to perfecting a final one,” per the company, “Grammarly is the AI-enabled communication partner that augments human skills so everyone can communicate more clearly while still preserving individual voice and key context. It helps you land your message and bring home the results you truly need.” According to Grammarly, expert linguists and researchers improve its available services via a variety of methods like machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and generative AI (GenAI).
In this vein (and as part of its Trust Center initiatives), Grammarly has pledged to do right by all of its users with “best-in-class security practices that keep data private and maintain our commitment to safe AI innovation.”
Clearly with AI center stage, Grammarly recently decided to take another step on its mission to “redefine productivity for the AI era,” as described by Grammarly co-founder Alex Shevchenko.
That’s why Grammarly announced its intent to acquire productivity platform Coda earlier this month, with Code’s co-founder and CEO Shishir Mehrotra set to become the new CEO of Grammarly, in tow.
To us, this makes good sense. This acquisition means that Grammarly and Coda — already with complementary products — can bring more AI-at-scale value to customers. Grammarly’s AI enterprise-grade agents (i.e. that feature authorship, plagiarism detection, and proofreading) are already used across some 500,000 applications daily; poised to be bolstered by Coda Docs and Coda Brain, Grammarly can do more for its users. It's as simple as that.
“For the past 15 years, Grammarly has been steadily building an AI super highway with the capacity and expertise to do so much more than writing assistance for our customers,” Shevchenko explained. “This acquisition of Coda is a big step toward achieving our vision of a world where humans and AI work together everywhere work happens. We’re on a new mission to redefine productivity for the AI era.”
“We have a massive opportunity to reinvent productivity as we know it, and Grammarly and Coda can pursue that vision faster together,” Mehrotra added. “Grammarly is a beloved software product used by millions of people every day. Combining Grammarly’s trusted AI assistant with the intelligence and flexibility of Coda can give our customers the productivity gains they’re looking for across their entire organization.”
Grammarly and Coda products will reportedly continue to work the way customers have come to expect. More details found in the official announcement here.
Be part of the ongoing tech-of-tomorrow conversation at Future of Work Expo 2025! The conference will focus on key elements of today's reimagined workplace; not just for improving productivity, but also providing better experiences through the intersection of technology like AI and the human element. Future of Work Expo, part of the #TECHSUPERSHOW experience, is taking place from February 11-13, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
