OpenAI Acquires NextSlide to Expand ChatGPT Presentations

OpenAI has acquired NextSlide, an AI startup built around turning raw ideas, notes, documents and research into polished, editable presentations, adding another piece to the company’s growing push beyond conversational AI.

The acquisition was publicly revealed in August 2026 by NextSlide founder Ahmed Beshry, although the transaction itself took place earlier this year. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

NextSlide’s team has now joined OpenAI and is working directly on ChatGPT, making the deal particularly interesting for users who already rely on the chatbot to research topics, summarize documents and prepare business content.

NextSlide Was Built Around Editable AI Presentations

NextSlide approached presentations differently from tools that simply generated a block of text and placed it across a few slides.

According to Beshry, the startup was designed to take inputs such as prompts, notes, documents or research and transform them into a polished presentation that remained editable. The broader goal was to make visual communication accessible to people who might have strong ideas but limited presentation-design skills.

Beshry said he started NextSlide a little over a year before announcing the acquisition. That gives the startup an unusually short journey from its creation to being acquired by one of the world’s largest AI companies.

The startup’s standalone future now appears to be over. Its website has effectively become an acquisition announcement stating that the NextSlide team is at OpenAI helping build ChatGPT.

NextSlide Team Moves Directly Into ChatGPT

The most important part of the transaction may be where the team is going.

Beshry confirmed that he now works on product at OpenAI and is helping build ChatGPT. NextSlide’s announcement similarly says the team will continue working toward its original mission by creating AI products that help people create, communicate and turn ideas into useful work.

OpenAI has not yet announced a dedicated “NextSlide” feature inside ChatGPT, so it would be premature to say that ChatGPT is immediately getting a full PowerPoint replacement.

Still, the expertise OpenAI is acquiring is highly relevant to presentation generation. NextSlide was specifically built around transforming unstructured information into structured visual material while preserving editability rather than producing a static final image.

That could eventually help ChatGPT move from assisting with presentation outlines and slide copy toward producing much more complete, editable decks.

Founder Ahmed Beshry Has Already Built and Sold One Startup

NextSlide is not Beshry’s first startup exit.

He previously co-founded Caper AI, which developed smart shopping carts and cashierless checkout technology. Instacart acquired Caper AI in 2021.

His move to OpenAI therefore brings not only presentation software expertise but experience building computer-vision and consumer-facing technology products.

This time, however, Beshry appears to be remaining directly involved. He said he is working on product at OpenAI rather than simply exiting after the sale.

OpenAI Is Expanding ChatGPT Into a Broader Work Platform

NextSlide also fits into a much bigger pattern at OpenAI.

The company has increasingly been acquiring product teams and technologies that can strengthen the applications built around its AI models rather than focusing only on model research.

In 2025, OpenAI announced its acquisition of experimentation platform Statsig, saying the technology would strengthen experimentation across its Applications organization. Statsig founder Vijaye Raji was also named CTO of Applications, with responsibilities spanning product engineering for ChatGPT and Codex.

OpenAI also merged with Jony Ive's io Products team as part of its push into new AI hardware and interfaces. OpenAI confirmed that the io team would work closely with its research, engineering and product teams.

NextSlide addresses another major work category: presentations.

Taken together, these moves suggest OpenAI wants ChatGPT to handle a greater portion of the workflow between receiving information and producing a finished piece of work.

The Competition Is Moving Closer to PowerPoint and Google Slides

Presentation generation is especially significant because it brings ChatGPT closer to one of the most valuable parts of workplace productivity software.

Microsoft already combines Copilot with its productivity ecosystem, including PowerPoint, while Google has been integrating Gemini deeper into Workspace. OpenAI does not have decades-old office applications to build on, so acquiring specialized teams offers another route toward creating AI-native alternatives. The Next Web described the NextSlide acquisition as another component in OpenAI's growing productivity software ambitions.

That creates an interesting competitive dynamic because Microsoft has also been one of OpenAI's most important strategic partners while offering its own AI-powered productivity products.

For users, the more immediate question is whether NextSlide’s technology eventually appears as a native ChatGPT capability.

OpenAI has not provided a release date, pricing information or detailed integration roadmap for NextSlide technology. For now, the confirmed development is simpler: OpenAI owns NextSlide, its team has joined ChatGPT, and the people who built an AI system specifically for editable presentations are now working inside OpenAI.

If that expertise is turned into a native ChatGPT feature, creating a presentation could eventually become less about manually moving AI-generated text into PowerPoint and more about giving ChatGPT the source material and editing the finished deck directly.