| As other comments pointed out Airtable and Airplane share an investor in Thrive Capital, which made negotiating a deal probably easier. But yeah, Airtable probably didn't pay a lot for Airplane. It still makes sense for Airtable, as they do get someone with a proven track record of building tech products in general to build out an important division of their company. You say that it's for something "unrelated", but integrating AI capabilities (Airtable isn't looking to build new foundational models I assume), should definitely be in their ballpark. Though of course that's a gamble with a very low bus factor. So it's a win-win-win for Airtable, the CEO/CTO and the investors. Airtable gets a capable leadership person to de-risk their AI endeavours (where IIRC they were lagging a bit behind competition like Notion). The CEO gets to work in a less stressful position, and maybe something that's a more interesting topic to him. The shared investor is happy as it strengthens their already strong unicorn company at the expense of a company that probably wouldn't be able to grow to notable size for them. Many of the other investors that are individuals I'd wager were happy that their money isn't tied up in Airplane anymore and that they can place new bets in a hot AI market (just a guess based on who is on that list). > Why not find a way to do right by their customers if Airtable truly isn't interested in the product? Open source it Presumably because the cost of that is significant for little to no gain for them, especially if you factor in the opportunity cost. > or find a company willing to take the product and customers on? I think the buyers that make most sense there would be e.g. Retool, which are too close of competitors to Airtable that they want to directly sell marketshare to them. It's probably better for Airtable to let the customers spread across all their competitors. |