Rahul Roy-Chowdhury to take over as Grammarly’s CEO on May 1, launch new AI tool

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On May 1, 2023, an Indian American Rahul Roy-Chowdhury will take over as the CEO of Grammarly, a San Francisco-based firm that provides artificial intelligence-based aid in writing English, including spelling, grammar, punctuation, and plagiarism checks.

Grammarly, the creator of a well-known writing assistant, is also introducing a brand-new artificial intelligence tool, the latest venture into the quickly expanding field of technology that can produce text, photographs, and videos from scratch in Silicon Valley. “The enthusiasm around AI is so palpable,” Roy-Chowdhury remarked. “We are witnessing a groundswell of support for this issue of communication.” GrammarlyGO is the upcoming offering from the startup that is scheduled to be launched in April. Roy-Chowhury who led the team that developed the product says that GrammarlyGO will assess context to construct and recommend phrasing for various circumstances based on a text’s level of formality and tone.

Grammarly was valued at $13 billion in a funding round in 2021 and was one of the most valuable unicorns. This made two of its founders, Canadian citizens Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko, billionaires. In 2009, they established the business in Kyiv alongside Dmytro Lider. The company, which employs roughly 1,000 people, still has offices in Berlin, New York, New York City, San Francisco, and Kyiv.

In the years before Grammarly, Roy-Chowdhury held positions at Lazard Ltd., Amazon.com Inc., and Google, where he worked on the Chrome browser and served as vice president of product management. In his appointed position, he will oversee a large group of executives. This includes the newly formed positions of chief technology officer, which are now held by Joe Xavier, and chief sales officer, which are currently handled by Matt Rosenberg.

Roy-Chowdhury will replace the current CEO Brad Hoover who will continue to serve on the company’s board of directors. Roy-Chowdhury, who was previously the global head of product at Grammarly.

In response to Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Grammarly has ceased operations in Belarus and Russia in response to Russia’s invasion. Since 2014, it has donated all net earnings from those countries to organizations that aid Ukrainians. Hoover said: “In a time of change, it’s always important to remind ourselves of our constants, our bedrock. There are many things that will not change: the clarity of our mission and relentless user focus; our EAGER values; our commitment to Ukraine; and, of course, our ability to seize the extraordinary opportunity ahead!”

In his statement uploaded on Grammarly Blog, Hoover, said: “We’re now at an inflection point for our product and business. Seizing this moment and reaching the next orders of magnitude requires us to move faster and at a much larger scale. A new era of leadership can help drive this inflection. As such, after twelve years at the helm of Grammarly, I am passing the baton to our current Global Head of Product, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, who will become CEO on May 1.”

He added that this is the ideal time for transition. “Grammarly is a deeply technical, product-led company; Rahul’s product and technology background is a tremendous asset, and he is well-positioned to help us navigate the path ahead. Rahul is also mission-driven and fiercely user-focused, and his experience and learnings from building Chrome into a platform can help us move faster at scale. During his two years at Grammarly, Rahul has focused on driving excellence and helped us up-level as a company. He has pushed our thinking and driven the organization forward with clarity, keen judgment, and sound decision-making. Under Rahul’s leadership, we also took a big step forward with our product, increasing quality and introducing solutions to help beyond the revision stage of communication,” Hoover added.

Hoover also announced that Noam Lovinsky will join as our Chief Product Officer “reporting to Rahul. Noam is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned product leader. He’s built businesses from zero to one and helped grow products to scale at companies like YouTube, Thumbtack, and Meta.”

“Additionally, I’m excited to share that Joe Xavier is now Grammarly’s Chief Technology Officer. In his nearly five years of leading our Engineering organization, Joe has built a world-class team, set the technical direction that’s enabled us to seamlessly serve tens of millions of users, established a strong enterprise-ready security posture, and helped us drive operational excellence company-wide. His leadership of the engineering org will continue to catapult Grammarly to new heights,” Hoover added.

 

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