Ollie, a privacy-focused AI assistant, is shutting down

Ollie, a startup whose mission was to deliver an AI assistant that respected its users’ privacy, says that it will be shutting down in a week. Bill Lennon, the company’s co-founder and CEO, took to X on Friday to deliver the news, noting that the app will officially shut down on November 6. “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.”

Ollie 是一家致力于提供尊重用户隐私的 AI 助手的初创公司，该公司表示将在本周内关闭。公司联合创始人兼首席执行官 Bill Lennon 周五在 X 上发布了这一消息，并指出该应用程序将于 11 月 6 日正式停止服务。“我为我们所取得的成就感到非常自豪，”Lennon 说，“我们用一个小团队打造了一款出色的个人助理，并学到了很多东西。我非常感谢我们出色的团队、用户、投资者以及在这一旅程中支持我们的每一个人。”

The text-based AI assistant market has exploded over the past year, as the increasingly powerful models that undergird such applications have made them significantly more useful for daily tasks. Ollie, which discussed its $7.5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures with TechCrunch in September, offered a subscription-based model. The assistant was focused on helping families stay connected and organized. The app connected to a user’s email and calendar, while also providing integrated functions to help with appointment bookings, meal planning, and bill payments. The company had also planned to eventually move into household budgeting.

过去一年里，基于文本的 AI 助手市场呈爆炸式增长，支撑这些应用程序的模型日益强大，使其在处理日常任务时变得更加实用。Ollie 在 9 月曾与 TechCrunch 讨论过由 Khosla Ventures 领投的 750 万美元种子轮融资，该应用采用订阅制模式。这款助手专注于帮助家庭保持联系和井然有序。该应用连接了用户的电子邮件和日历，同时提供集成功能以协助预约、膳食规划和账单支付。该公司此前还计划最终涉足家庭预算管理领域。

Crucially, Ollie was one of the first mainstream apps that managed to achieve SOC 2, a privacy compliance standard that companies can attain via an independent audit. Unfortunately, user privacy has never been a hugely profitable aspect of the tech industry. If anything, many new digital assistants present unique privacy challenges for their users — as companies like Instinct have shown. Ultimately, the pressures of the burgeoning AI industry took a toll on the company, Lennon said. “We got close, but ultimately couldn’t keep up,” he added. “With Muse, Instinct, and others entering the space, it became harder to stand out, grow, and raise the capital we needed to succeed.”

至关重要的是，Ollie 是首批获得 SOC 2 认证的主流应用程序之一，这是一种公司可以通过独立审计获得的隐私合规标准。遗憾的是，用户隐私在科技行业中从未成为一个利润丰厚的领域。事实上，许多新的数字助手反而给用户带来了独特的隐私挑战，正如 Instinct 等公司所展示的那样。Lennon 表示，最终，新兴 AI 行业的压力对公司造成了影响。“我们曾接近成功，但最终还是没能跟上，”他补充道，“随着 Muse、Instinct 等公司进入该领域，想要脱颖而出、实现增长并筹集成功所需的资金变得越来越困难。”

Ollie’s customers will receive instructions on how to export data and receive refunds in the coming days, Lennon added.

Lennon 还补充说，Ollie 的用户将在未来几天内收到关于如何导出数据和获取退款的说明。