OpenAI Acquires Hiro Finance, Adds Consumer Financial Planning Talent
OpenAI has acquired Hiro Finance, an AI-powered personal finance startup founded in 2023. Founder Ethan Bloch and approximately ten employees are joining OpenAI. The company will shut down on April 20 and delete all user data by May 13.
Hiro launched its AI tool roughly five months before the acquisition. The app let users input salary, debts, and monthly costs, then modeled different financial scenarios to support decision-making.
The startup included a verification feature that let users check the accuracy of the AI's financial calculations-a deliberate choice when large language models have documented weaknesses with numerical reasoning.
Bloch's Track Record in Fintech
Bloch is a serial entrepreneur with three previous exits. He sold Flowtown, a social media SaaS tool, for $5 million in 2009. He later founded Digit, a digital-only bank designed to automate saving, which Oportun acquired in 2021 for more than $200 million.
Bloch describes Hiro as his fifteenth project. He started building products at age 13; the first thirteen failed.
Why OpenAI Moved on Consumer Finance
ChatGPT is already marketed as a tool for business finance teams. The Hiro acquisition adds focused talent in consumer financial planning, where specialized AI reasoning around budgets, debt paydown sequencing, and savings optimization requires different product approaches than general-purpose chat.
Whether OpenAI will build a dedicated consumer financial planning product or fold the expertise into its broader platform remains unclear. The deal adds to OpenAI's presence in AI for Finance.
Hiro was backed by Ribbit Capital, General Catalyst, and Restive. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
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