The archive · AI & Models · Product decision · 2022–2026
StackAI's no-code agent bet: MIT PhDs sell to Asana for $75M
Two MIT robotics PhDs bet non-engineers would build enterprise AI agents on a no-code canvas: 100+ customers, and a reported $75M Asana acquisition in May 2026.
StackAI
What the business is
StackAI was a San Francisco no-code platform for building, testing, deploying and governing AI agents that execute workflows across enterprise systems like Salesforce, Slack, Oracle and document tools.
Starting capital：~$19M total raised (just under $20M per TechCrunch/PitchBook), most from the $16M Series A led by Lobby Capital and LifeX Ventures; acquired for a reported $75M.
How it started
Antoni Rosinol and Bernardo Aceituno met as MIT robotics PhDs, then concluded software agents were the more useful robots: enterprise value lay in the document-choked systems behind firewalls. They founded StackAI in 2022 and joined Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch.
What happened
The platform crossed 100+ enterprise customers and 1M+ documents processed by 2025, with BAE Systems, Nubank and LifeMD among customers; it raised a $16M Series A in May 2025 led by Lobby Capital and LifeX Ventures, with Vercel and Weaviate CEOs joining. Asana — racing Zapier and AI labs for the workflow-automation market — announced the acquisition on 2026-05-28.
How it ended up
Acquired: Asana completed the purchase on 2026-05-28 for a reported $75M; founders joined Asana, and StackAI continues to operate as its own product and brand.
Background
StackAI was a San Francisco startup selling a no-code platform for building AI agents that execute workflows across enterprise systems — Salesforce, Slack, Google Workspace, Oracle, document tools. Its bet: enterprises adopt AI when the person who understands the work, not an engineering ticket, can build a governed agent that reaches into the systems where business actually runs.
Founders Antoni Rosinol and Bernardo Aceituno were MIT robotics PhDs who concluded software agents were the more useful robots. They started the company in 2022, joined Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch, and shipped the unglamorous features first: role-based access control, SOC 2 Type II, on-premise deployment and local LLM endpoints for regulated data. By 2025 the platform had 100+ enterprise customers — BAE Systems, Nubank and LifeMD among them — and had processed over a million documents.
The $16M Series A in May 2025, led by Lobby Capital and LifeX Ventures with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch participating, priced the plumbing. Asana, racing Zapier and AI labs to own enterprise workflow automation, announced on 2026-05-28 that it had completed the acquisition for a reported $75M; the founders joined Asana, and StackAI keeps running as its own product and brand.
What has to be true
- The no-code canvas put agent-building in the hands of the domain expert — a compliance officer, not an engineering queue — which is where the real process knowledge lives.
- StackAI solved the part of AI that demos skip: connectors, permissions, retrieval and governance, so agents actually reached production inside banks and defense contractors.
- Shipping compliance-first (SOC 2 Type II, RBAC, on-prem, local LLMs) let it win regulated customers early — the same customers a big acquirer wanted.
- The three-year arc from YC W23 to a reported $75M exit shows the market priced the missing plumbing, not the model.
What can be applied
When the bottleneck is integration, ship the boring plumbing first: no-code canvas plus governance (SOC 2, on-prem, RBAC) let a non-engineer build agents regulated enterprises trusted.
Aftermath
As of the 2026-05-28 announcement, StackAI operates as its own product and brand inside Asana, which is betting its 'operating system for human-agent teams' on cross-system execution. Founders Tony Rosinol and Bernard Aceituno joined Asana; the reported $75M price compares with about $19M raised. Whether the bet pays off now depends on Asana's execution against Zapier, OpenAI and Anthropic in the same workflow-automation space.
Sources
- Asana acquires no-code agent-builder StackAI
- Asana Acquires StackAI, Adding Cross-System Execution for Human-Agent Teams
- StackAI
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