Ollie, a startup dedicated to offering an AI assistant that prioritized user privacy, has announced it will be closing its doors in one week. Co-founder and CEO Bill Lennon shared the news on X Friday, stating that the app will officially shut down on November 6. "I'm really proud of what we accomplished," Lennon said. "We built an incredible personal assistant with a small team, and learned a ton. I'm grateful to our amazing team, our users, our investors, and everyone who supported us on this journey."

The market for text-based AI assistants has surged over the past year, as increasingly powerful underlying models have made these applications far more useful for everyday tasks. Ollie, which had discussed its $7 [funding], focused on helping families stay connected and organized. The app linked to a user's email and calendar while offering integrated features for appointment bookings, meal planning, and bill payments. The company had also planned to eventually expand into household budgeting. Notably, Ollie was among the first mainstream apps to achieve SOC 2, a privacy compliance standard obtained through an independent audit.

Unfortunately, user privacy has never been a particularly profitable aspect of the tech industry. If anything, many new digital assistants introduce unique privacy challenges for their users—as companies like Instinct have demonstrated. Ultimately, the pressures of the rapidly growing AI industry took their toll on the company, Lennon said. "We got close, but ultimately couldn't keep up," he added. "With Muse, Instinct, and others entering the space, it became harder to stand out, grow, and raise the capital we needed to succeed."

Ollie's customers will receive instructions on how to export their data and obtain refunds in the coming days, Lennon added.