The team behind Cove, a Sequoia-backed startup working on AI-powered collaboration boards, has joined Microsoft, according to an email sent to customers announcing Cove’s end of service.
Cove was founded in late 2023 by Stephen Chau, Andy Szybalski, and Mike Chu, who worked on Google Maps features such as Street View. The startup raised a $6 million seed round in 2024 from Sequoia Capital, Elad Gil, Homebrew, Adverb, Scott Belsky, and Lenny Rachitsky.
The tool was an infinite whiteboard on which the AI could generate different blocks for tasks such as travel planning. The founders felt that AI’s chat interface was not editable and that Canvas was more flexible when using prompts to go in different directions.
Cove also now allows users to access built-in browsers, PDFs, and images to give the AI more context and create new cards, tables, and lists.
The startup competed with the likes of Miro, TLDraw, and Kosmik.
In an email to customers, the company said the entire Cove team has joined Microsoft, the product will be discontinued on April 1, and all user data will be removed. Cove said it is refunding all March subscriptions and offering a data export process.
“When we founded Cove, we set out to reimagine how people collaborate with AI. As the capabilities of our models accelerate, our belief in that mission only grows stronger. We’re excited to continue this work with Microsoft AI, where we have the opportunity to pursue even bigger visions,” the company said in a blog post on its site.
Additionally, the company said, “The idea behind[Cove]will live on within Microsoft.” Notably, Microsoft added Copilot to its collaboration product, Whiteboard, in 2023.
TechCrunch reached out to Microsoft to learn how it plans to integrate Cove’s technology within its ecosystem, but did not immediately receive a response.
