Grammarly launched 16 years ago as a grammar-checking tool, but its founders always had more ambitious plans. One of them, Max Lytvyn, previously ran a plagiarism detection startup where he saw how often people struggled not with honesty, but with the sheer difficulty of writing clearly. With Grammarly, he set out to make the process of translating thoughts into words less intimidating. “Technology just wasn’t there to make it possible,” Lytvyn told Observer at the Web Summit in Vancouver this week.
That’s no longer the case. What began as a tool for fixing grammatical errors has evolved into a sophisticated A.I. platform helping users communicate more effectively across emails, documents, and messaging apps. Now, with a new $1 billion funding round led by General Catalyst—announced yesterday (May 29)—the San Francisco-based company is preparing to scale its A.I. capabilities even further.
The new funding will support Grammarly’s expansion across sales, marketing and acquisitions. “Moving fast means building fast, expanding the market fast, and potentially acquiring other companies to accelerate our progress,” said Lytvyn, who serves as the company’s head of revenue. Last valued at $13 billion in 2021, the company now reports more than $700 million in annual revenue and serves 40 million daily users.
The financing follows Grammarly’s acquisition of productivity startup Coda six months ago, a move that brought Coda CEO Shishir Mehrotra onboard as Grammarly’s new CEO. The leadership change is part of a broader push to grow Grammarly’s A.I. capabilities.
“The emerging technology has been an accelerant—we can do way more now,” said Lytvyn, noting that Grammarly’s suite of A.I. agents will expand beyond grammar, plagiarism and summarization to include workplace tools like fact-checkers and systems that retrieve data from customer relationship management platforms.
The rise of generative A.I. has also brought a roster of newfound rivals. “Some of the things that only we could do, now anybody could do. That’s fine, that’s the nature of technology,” said Lytvyn. He noted that Grammarly still retains the benefit of scale and ubiquitous integration across applications.
Will higher education embrace A.I.?
A.I.’s rapid adoption has sparked growing concerns in academia, where universities and colleges are grappling with how to manage its use. Some schools have gone as far as banning Grammarly entirely, citing the tool’s A.I.-driven features as incompatible with academic integrity policies.
“The educational system has to teach to use A.I. effectively, rather than ban it,” said Lytvyn, who noted that students will need A.I. skills after they graduate and enter the workforce.
To support academic institutions navigating the challenges of A.I., Grammarly has rolled out tools like Authorship—a feature that identifies which parts of a document are original, A.I.-generated or copied from other sources. The tool echoes Lytvyn’s early work in plagiarism detection. “It’s almost like a next iteration of plagiarism detection,” he said.
But Grammarly’s user base now extends far beyond the classroom. “It’s from 6th graders all the way to professionals in every field,” said Lytvyn, who noted the company plans to eventually launch hundreds of specialized A.I. agents to support various communication needs. With the technology finally in place to realize Grammarly’s original vision, speed is now the priority. “A.I. accelerated everything, and to stay on top of this, we need to move fast,” he said.