Coda was founded in 2014 by Shishir Mehrotra and Alex DeRuijter as an all-in-one collaborative workspace that merges the familiarity of a document with the flexibility of an application. The platform allowed teams to build interactive docs that combined text, tables, formulas, and embedded integrations into living workflows, replacing the need for multiple niche productivity tools. Coda raised a Series D in 2021 at a $1.4 billion valuation and counted Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, and General Catalyst among its investors.
The product introduced a unique building-block model where pages, tables, buttons, and packs could be combined to build trackers, OKR hubs, project management systems, and lightweight internal apps. With the launch of Coda AI in 2023, the company added generative writing, summarization, and table automation features that brought conversational AI directly into the document surface.
In December 2024, Grammarly announced the acquisition of Coda, and Coda co-founder Shishir Mehrotra was appointed CEO of the combined company. The deal, which closed in early 2025, was positioned as a strategic move to transform Grammarly from a writing assistant into a broader AI productivity platform spanning documents, apps, and agents.
Coda continues to operate under the Grammarly umbrella, with its workspace technology serving as the foundation for new AI-native productivity surfaces. Existing customers retained access to their docs while the combined company began integrating Grammarly's writing intelligence into the Coda workspace.