Two companies with Canadian roots want to build the internet’s “authenticity layer.”
Superhuman, formerly known as Grammarly, has acquired GPTZero, an AI detector that checks for large language model (LLM)-generated content across the internet.
The two companies, both with Canadian roots, announced the deal on Tuesday, a combination they said is meant to build the internet’s “authenticity layer.” While Superhuman’s platform already has AI detection capabilities, the company said that detectors can often deliver conflicting results and that GPTZero’s expertise “can create a more complete and reliable picture of authenticity.”
“When anyone can generate a half-decent draft in seconds, there’s now a premium on authentic expertise.”
Edward Tian, GPTZero
The two companies are betting that, in a world where synthetic generation on the internet is increasingly overtaking human-crafted content, people will care to know the difference. GPTZero runs a “hallucination detector” that has revealed citation errors in academic papers, and the website IstheInternetAI.com, which tracks AI usage across the internet in real time. As of this writing, it claims 16 percent of internet content is AI.
“We’re bringing the most trusted writing tool and the most trusted AI detector into one platform, so that confidence in content becomes the default for writers and consumers,” Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra said in a statement.
GPTZero co-founder Edward Tian wrote in a blog post that joining Superhuman means access to more resources, expertise, and customer insights to inform its products, as well as the ability to address high-demand features it hasn’t been able to tackle on its own, like AI detection in email inboxes.
“When anyone can generate a half-decent draft in seconds, there’s now a premium on authentic expertise—and our whole product suite is built around that,” Tian wrote.
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New York City-based GPTZero was founded in 2022 by Tian and Alex Cui, two entrepreneurs with roots in Toronto. Following its official launch in January of 2023, GPTZero’s user base grew to four million in 2024 before the company secured a $10-million “preemptive” Series A funding round. It has since grown to over 19 million users worldwide.
Conversely, all three of Superhuman’s co-founders, Max Lytvyn, Dmytro Lider, and Alex Shevchenko, have Canadian ties or live in Canada. The San Francisco Bay Area company, which employs roughly 1,500 people according to its LinkedIn, also expanded to Vancouver in 2019 to tap into the city’s well of tech talent. The company rebranded from Grammarly late last year as part of a transformation into an all-in-one productivity platform. While the company is focused on delivering “authenticity” with this acquisition, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Superhuman earlier this year over a feature that generated editing suggestions based on notable authors and academics without consent.
According to Business Insider, Mehrotra said that Tian, Cui, and GPTZero’s 30 employees will join Superhuman’s team.
“Together, Superhuman and GPTZero are building toward something bigger than either individual company: an authenticity layer that travels with you, wherever you read, write, and create,” Tian wrote in the blog post. “For our users, the mission to preserve what’s human on the internet remains the same.”
Feature image courtesy GPTZero.
