The founding team of Notch, a startup that built AI agents for advertising, is joining OpenAI's Ads team. Co-founders Vinay Jain and Aman Jain announced the move in posts on October 14 and 15, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Reports differ on the structure. Dealroom, summarising a report by citybiz, said OpenAI had acquired Notch and brought on its co-founders. Pulse 2 noted that the founders did not say whether OpenAI acquired Notch as a company, and gave no terms. Because the announcement speaks only of the founding team joining OpenAI, this story treats it as an acquihire, a deal made mainly to hire the people behind a startup.
OpenAI has not published a statement in the sources reviewed.
What Notch built
Vinay Jain wrote that he and Aman Jain started Notch two years ago because they believed AI agents could help businesses grow autonomously. The company built agentic experiences for advertising and worked with thousands of small businesses, he said.
Notch's product, called Max, was described as an autonomous AI marketer that carries out advertising from start to finish: market research, creating ads, running campaigns and learning from the results. Aman Jain, who is Notch's chief technology officer, wrote that businesses and agencies trusted the product with their advertising budgets.
According to the citybiz report quoted by Dealroom, the pair worked at Meta before Notch, where they built advertising products, and the founders said that working closely with advertisers taught them that useful agents need more than capable models.
“Proud to have built Notch alongside Vinay Jain and our team.”
Why OpenAI is hiring them
The founders are joining what they called the OpenAI Ads team. Neither the founders' posts nor the coverage reviewed explains what the team is building or how Notch's experience will be used, and OpenAI gave no reason of its own.
The move fits the background of the two founders, who spent their earlier careers in advertising technology and then built an agent that handled the work that ad managers do by hand. Whether OpenAI wants Notch's technology, its small-business customers or only the people is not stated in the sources.
An acquihire differs from a conventional acquisition in that the buyer's main interest is the team rather than the product or the customer list, and the startup's product is often wound down. Nothing in the sources reviewed says that Notch's Max product will be shut down, and nothing says it will continue.
The founders and the funding
Notch's funding, investors, headcount and location were not given in the posts or in the coverage reviewed. The company was about two years old, going by Vinay Jain's own account.
Aman Jain, Notch's chief technology officer, said he was proud to have built Notch alongside Vinay Jain and "our team", but no headcount was reported.
The sources also do not say whether Notch's other employees are joining OpenAI, what the founders' roles will be, or whether investors in Notch, if any, are being repaid. The posts were written by the founders themselves, and OpenAI had not confirmed the details in the coverage reviewed.
What happens to customers
Notch has told users with account questions to use its existing support channels during the transition, according to the Dealroom summary. The announcement did not say what will happen to the Max product, to customers' current plans or to the data held in their accounts.
Customers who run campaigns through Notch will need to watch for further notices from the company. Until those arrive, the only confirmed fact is that the founding team is moving to OpenAI.
