# OpenTag

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/opentag/ · added 2026-11-12 · updated 2026-11-12

**In short.** OpenTag (AI coworker in Slack that works with many AI models, United States): Live with 10 teams by the founders' count, August 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 3 co-founders; a founding product designer is also listed (team page, November 2026). Launched August 2026; still running.

AI coworker in Slack that works with many AI models · United States · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Tools for using AI models

- Outcome: Live with 10 teams by the founders' count, August 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: August 2026; months from launch to the outcome: 0
- Team: 3 co-founders; a founding product designer is also listed (team page, November 2026)
- Outside funding: Y Combinator Summer 2026 batch; amount not stated in the sources
- Main factor: Own problem
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 1, capital needed 2
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Funded, Running, B2B, Workplace assistant

Links:

- Visit tryopentag.com: https://www.tryopentag.com/

**The product.** An AI agent that lives in Slack. A person tags it in a channel and gives it a job, and the result returns to the same thread. It reads company knowledge and connected tools such as Linear, GitHub, Notion and Stripe. It picks one of more than 40 models for each task.

**Why it worked.** The three founders say they built the coworker they wanted at their last company, where they ran every job themselves. The product sits in Slack, where a request already has its context. Teams pay for work done in credits, not for each seat.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

OpenTag is an AI coworker for Slack: an agent that takes a task from a chat message and uses the tools the team connected. It reports back in the thread. It is model agnostic: it sends each task to the model that suits it, from Claude, GPT, Gemini and others. It also writes a company wiki from the conversations it sees.

Tony Kam, Shelden Shi and Wilson Nguyen founded it in 2026 and first named the product Gini. The three had worked together at Lilac Labs, a company in the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch. On 25 August 2026 the founders' launch post said that early access had started about two weeks before and that OpenTag was "live with 10 teams".

No revenue figure was found, so the story is grade E. The "10 teams" figure is the founders' own statement from one post, with no customer named. The pricing page shows self-service plans and a free trial that needs a card. No source says that a customer has paid.

## Why did OpenTag work?

### The founders built the coworker they wanted at Lilac Labs

The Y Combinator launch post says OpenTag is the coworker the founders wanted at their last company, when they ran every job themselves. The founders' blog says the idea grew from a problem they felt there each day. Company work and context rested on the people already carrying it.

### It runs inside Slack, where each request already has context

The company's blog says work does not begin in an empty prompt box. It begins in a channel, near the decisions and people behind the request. OpenTag reads only the channels it is invited into, and it uses the access of the person asking.

### It charges for work done in credits, not for each seat

The pricing page says credits pay for the work OpenTag does and that adding people changes nothing on the bill. A weekly report costs about US$15 a month in credits, the page says. Whether this pricing helped sales is not shown by any source.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages and the founders' launch post. They are grade C.

- Each task runs as a cloud agent with its own computer and browser, sandboxed and limited to the tools the task needs. The security page says the agent waits for a person before it sends, spends, submits or purchases.
- The agent chooses a model for each task from more than 40, including Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek and Llama. The home page says the models are reached through Conifer's catalogue.
- More than 50 integrations connect company systems such as Linear, GitHub, Notion, Google Drive, PostHog and Stripe. Each integration belongs to the person who connected it.
- OpenTag writes and updates a company wiki from channel conversations and connected sources, and recurring requests can become scheduled routines.
- Slack is the only chat platform today. The pages say Microsoft Teams support is coming soon.
- The company reports a SOC 2 Type I examination by Prescient Assurance and a changelog with 358 entries from August to November 2026.

Sources: [1, 4, 9, 12, 13]

## Who tried this before OpenTag, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups promised team software or an AI workforce inside the tools that people already used. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Memo (2020 to 2023; funding US$5.0M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A shared hub of rich media memos for engineering, product and design teams, to replace scattered channels.
- Why it died: The database says the incumbents rapidly adopted similar features, and that Memo found it hard to reach network effects inside a company.
- Record: 

### Olive AI (2012 to 2023; funding US$852.0M; cause: Overpromising and unit economics)

- Promise: An AI workforce of software bots that would take over the repetitive administrative work of hospitals.
- Why it died: The database says it sold a vision of autonomous AI that it did not deliver. Each hospital deployment needed heavy custom work, which broke the unit economics.
- Record: 

### Kite DevTool (2014 to 2024; funding US$21.0M; cause: Timing and monetization)

- Promise: AI code completion inside the editors that developers already used.
- Why it died: The database says it came about seven years before the model wave and made monetization mistakes. Later, GitHub Copilot became the default tool.
- Record: 

## What changed

Each of the three worked inside a tool that someone else controlled, or promised work that software could not yet do alone. Memo met incumbents that copied its features. Olive AI promised autonomy that its bots did not deliver. Kite arrived before the models were good enough.

OpenTag differs in two ways that the sources show. It sits in Slack, which approves apps for its Marketplace. The company also says that a person approves actions with real consequences. It also routes to many models, so no single model maker decides its quality. A platform owner could still add the same feature. The company's comparison page names Slackbot, and its home page names Claude Tag.

## Can one person copy OpenTag now?

**Verdict: The structure can be copied. The traction is not proved.**

A model-agnostic agent inside a chat tool is a structure that a small team can build now. The founders show how they priced and positioned it. The sources do not show that it earns money, so the story does not prove demand.

1. Pick the chat tool where requests already start, and build the agent inside it.
2. Route each task to the cheapest model that can do it, so model price changes help you.
3. Charge by work done, in shared credits, so a whole team can use it without seat costs.
4. Ask a person to approve any action that sends, spends or changes data.

**What is still open.** Other places where requests start and context already exists: ticket queues, shared inboxes, project boards and team wikis.

## How much revenue does OpenTag make? The numbers, graded

Live with 10 teams by the founders' own statement in August 2026, and self-service plans on sale in November 2026. No revenue figure is published

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live teams, August 2026 | 10 teams | D | The founders' launch post of 25 August 2026 says: "We started early access a 2 weeks ago and are live with 10 teams." No customer is named in the post. | [4] |
| Company start | 2026 | C | The Y Combinator company page says "Founded: 2026" and "Team Size: 3". The product was first named Gini, and the founders' launch post under that name is dated 20 August 2026. The changelog entry of 24 August 2026 says: "Gini is now OpenTag across the product". | [5, 12, 17] |
| Founders | Tony Kam, Shelden Shi, Wilson Nguyen | C | Named as co-founders on the company's team page and on the Y Combinator page. The page lists a founding product designer as a fourth team member. | [5, 6] |
| Earlier company of the founders | Lilac Labs, Y Combinator Summer 2024 | C | Y Combinator lists it as inactive, founded in 2024, and describes a voice AI for drive-thru orders. It names two of the three as founders and the third as founding engineer. The founders' blog post says OpenTag is the second company the three have built together. | [5, 7, 14] |
| Accelerator | Y Combinator, Summer 2026 batch | C | The company's blog post of 5 July 2026 and the Y Combinator page. The amount of funding is not stated. | [5, 7] |
| Team plan price shown in November 2026 | US$500 a month, one of six credit packs from US$50 to US$2,000 | C | Company pricing page, read 12 November 2026. A 7-day free trial needs a card. | [2] |
| Team plan price shown on 28 September 2026 | US$50 a month for 5,000 credits | C | Internet Archive copy of the pricing page. It also showed a US$200 free trial. | [3] |
| Slack Marketplace approval | 1 September 2026 | C | Company blog post by the CEO. No independent copy of the Slack listing was read. | [8] |
| Stripe App Marketplace approval | 29 October 2026 | C | Company blog post. | [10] |
| SOC 2 Type I examination | controls examined as of 23 September 2026 by Prescient Assurance | C | Company blog post of 8 October 2026. It says Type II is in progress and that a SOC 2 report is an examination, not a certification. | [9] |
| Changelog entries, August to November 2026 | 358 | C | The company's updates page counts 358 updates, 168 of them in October 2026. | [12] |
| Legal entity | Open Curiosity, Inc. | C | Named in the footer, the terms and the privacy policy. The sources do not date its incorporation. | [1, 11] |

How to read this table. A grade C value comes from the company's own pages or blog. A grade D value is one founder statement with one date. No value is grade A or B.

## Pricing

OpenTag prices read from the company's pricing page on 12 November 2026 (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | 0 | 0 | 7-day free trial, card required |
| Team, 10,000 credits |  | 50 | credits shared by the workspace |
| Team, 20,000 credits |  | 100 |  |
| Team, 40,000 credits |  | 200 |  |
| Team, 110,000 credits |  | 500 | shown as the Team price; about 2,200 tasks a month |
| Team, 230,000 credits |  | 1,000 |  |
| Team, 480,000 credits |  | 2,000 |  |
| Enterprise | custom | custom | book a demo; annual billing by contact |

The Team plan is a monthly pack of credits shared by the whole workspace. The page shows six packs and marks the US$500 pack as the Team price. Credits pay for the work OpenTag does, and adding people costs nothing extra. A card is required for the 7-day trial. An Internet Archive copy of the page from 28 September 2026 showed the Team plan at US$50 a month with 5,000 credits.

## When did OpenTag launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a Y Combinator announcement in July 2026 to a pricing page with six credit packs in November 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **5 July 2026** (grade C [7]): The company's blog announces that OpenTag is part of the Y Combinator Summer 2026 batch. The post is signed by the CEO.
- **20 August 2026** (grade C [12, 17]): The founders publish a Y Combinator launch post for the product under its first name, Gini. The changelog dates the change of name to OpenTag to 24 August 2026.
- **25 August 2026** (grade D [4]): The founders' launch post says early access began about two weeks earlier and that OpenTag is live with 10 teams.
- **1 September 2026** (grade C [8]): The company says Slack approved OpenTag for the Slack Marketplace.
- **8 October 2026** (grade C [9]): The company reports a completed SOC 2 Type I examination, as of 23 September 2026.
- **12 November 2026** (grade C [2, 3]): The pricing page shows six Team credit packs from US$50 to US$2,000 a month. An archive copy of 28 September showed a single US$50 Team plan.

## What could go wrong for OpenTag?

- **What is not verified.** No revenue figure was found. The only traction figure is the founders' statement of 25 August 2026 that OpenTag was live with 10 teams, with no named customer. The pricing page shows self-service plans and a trial that needs a card, but no source says that a customer has paid. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile, a press article or a customer case study. The US$500 Team price on the page is one of six credit packs. A copy of the page from 28 September 2026 showed a single US$50 Team plan.
- **Logos, counters and badges.** The home page says "Trusted by teams at" and lists nine company names. No customer story or press article was found for them. It also shows "50+" integrations, more than 40 models and a target of "up to a 70% cut in cost". The page itself calls the 70% a target and not a customer average. The Y Combinator and Slack Marketplace badges match the company's own blog posts, and no Slack page was read. No testimonial with a name or photo was found on the home or pricing page.
- **Earlier company and positioning.** The product was named Gini until 24 August 2026, and Lilac Labs is an earlier company of the same people. Y Combinator lists Lilac Labs as founded in 2024 and inactive. No source says whether Open Curiosity, Inc. is the same legal entity as Lilac Labs, and no company register was read. The launch post of 25 August 2026 reuses most of the Gini post of 20 August 2026. The blog post dated 5 July 2026 uses the name OpenTag and links to the later launch post. The launch post names the product the "model agnostic Claude Tag". The home page says Claude Tag "is tied to Claude" and that OpenTag does not sell model tokens.
- **Connected data and integrations.** OpenTag works through accounts that the customer connects, and no sale of contact data by OpenTag was found. The Apollo pages say the product researches prospects "through your Apollo account". The documentation says enrichment and sequence work depend on the customer's own Apollo plan. Another connection places outbound phone calls through the customer's Bland AI account, and Bland bills those calls separately. The security page says a person approves actions that send, spend, submit or purchase. The comparison page is narrower: "Gmail sends require approval; other supported actions may run immediately". The documentation says an interactive Bland call can run without a separate approval card. The privacy policy says the company's own website uses RB2B to identify business visitors for follow-up.

## Sources

1. OpenTag home page, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the product, the logo wall, the counters, the model and integration lists, the FAQ and the legal entity in the footer.
2. OpenTag pricing page, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full. Source for the trial, the six credit packs, the credit examples and the billing questions.
3. OpenTag pricing page, Internet Archive copy of 28 September 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260928143627/https://www.tryopentag.com/pricing (grade C). Read in full. Source for the earlier Team plan at US$50 a month and the US$200 free trial.
4. Y Combinator Launch post: OpenTag - Model Agnostic Claude Tag, 25 August 2026 — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/T8R-opentag-model-agnostic-claude-tag (grade D). Read in full. The page data gives the creation date 25 August 2026. Source for the 10 live teams, the four-part product description and the founders' earlier jobs.
5. Y Combinator company page: OpenTag — https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/opentag (grade C). Read in full. Source for the batch, the founded year 2026, the team size of 3 and the three founders.
6. OpenTag team page, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/team (grade C). Read in full. Source for the named co-founders, their roles and the fourth team member.
7. OpenTag blog, 5 July 2026: OpenTag is backed by Y Combinator — https://www.tryopentag.com/blog/backed-by-y-combinator (grade C). Read in full. Source for the batch, Lilac Labs and the reason the founders built the product.
8. OpenTag blog, 1 September 2026: OpenTag is officially approved for the Slack Marketplace — https://www.tryopentag.com/blog/approved-for-slack-marketplace (grade C). Read in full. Source for the Slack approval date.
9. OpenTag blog, 8 October 2026: OpenTag has completed its SOC 2 Type I examination — https://www.tryopentag.com/blog/soc-2-type-i-examination-complete (grade C). Read in full. Source for the examination date, the examiner and the Type II status.
10. OpenTag blog, 29 October 2026: OpenTag is officially approved for the Stripe App Marketplace — https://www.tryopentag.com/blog/approved-for-stripe-marketplace (grade C). Read in full. Source for the Stripe listing.
11. OpenTag terms of service, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/terms (grade C). Read in full. Source for the legal entity, the trial and credit rules and the absence of any student or child marketing.
12. OpenTag updates page, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/updates (grade C). Read the first page. Source for the 358 changelog entries and the counts by month.
13. OpenTag security page, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/security (grade C). Read in full. Source for the access rules and the approval step before actions.
14. Y Combinator company page: Lilac Labs — https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/lilac-labs (grade C). Read in full. Source for the founders' earlier company, its batch, its inactive status and its product.
15. OpenTag Apollo integration page, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/integration/apollo (grade C). Read in full. Source for how the Apollo connection works through the customer's own account.
16. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Record pages read on the website on the day of writing. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.
17. Y Combinator Launch post: Gini: AI coworker that lives in Slack, 20 August 2026 — https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Sz9-gini-ai-coworker-that-lives-in-slack (grade C). Read in full. The page data gives the creation date 20 August 2026 and names OpenTag as the company. Source for the earlier name of the product.
18. OpenTag documentation: Connecting to Apollo, Connecting to Bland AI, and Plans, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/docs/integrations/apollo (grade C). Read the three pages in full. Source for the customer's own Apollo and Bland AI accounts, the approval rule for calls and the self-service billing.
19. OpenTag comparison page: OpenTag vs Slackbot, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/compare/slackbot (grade C). Read in full. Source for the comparison with Slackbot and the sentence on which actions need approval.
20. OpenTag privacy policy, read 12 November 2026 — https://www.tryopentag.com/privacy (grade C). Read the sections on the legal entity, website tools, sale of data and children. Source for the visitor-identification tool on the company's website.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run OpenTag? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: OpenTag).