Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to take on Microsoft Office and Google Workspace
News Source
β’Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:59:09 +0000
π° What Happened
Rohit Patel is leaving Meta after eight years of building AI there. He was a director at Meta Superintelligence Labs. On Tuesday he launched a startup called Ndoc, which he says can replace Microsoft Office and Google Workspace with one AI-first workspace.
Ndoc puts three things on one screen. Stage holds slide decks, dashboards and small apps. Narrative holds the analysis, sources and charts that explain the numbers. Model holds the data and code behind them. Patel says colleagues can open the work even without an Ndoc account.
π The Backstory
Word, Excel and Google Docs have run offices for decades, and switching is hard because everyone shares files with everyone else. Microsoft and Google have added AI helpers, but mostly as buttons inside the old tools. Patel argues that is not enough to fix how people jump between apps.
His background is in reinforcement learning, a method where AI learns by trial and error, and in checking whether AI output can be trusted. He is also not the first to leave Meta. Its global affairs chief, a well-known AI researcher and its head of AI-for-work have all gone recently.
π― Why It Matters
Most office work still happens in a few big apps. A serious AI rival would change how documents, spreadsheets and slides are made, and who controls that market.
Rohit Patel is leaving Meta after eight years of building AI there. He was a director at Meta Superintelligence Labs. On Tuesday he launched a startup called Ndoc, which he says can replace Microsoft Office and Google Workspace with one AI-first workspace.
Ndoc puts three things on one screen. Stage holds slide decks, dashboards and small apps. Narrative holds the analysis, sources and charts that explain the numbers. Model holds the data and code behind them. Patel says colleagues can open the work even without an Ndoc account.
Word, Excel and Google Docs have run offices for decades, and switching is hard because everyone shares files with everyone else. Microsoft and Google have added AI helpers, but mostly as buttons inside the old tools. Patel argues that is not enough to fix how people jump between apps.
His background is in reinforcement learning, a method where AI learns by trial and error, and in checking whether AI output can be trusted. He is also not the first to leave Meta. Its global affairs chief, a well-known AI researcher and its head of AI-for-work have all gone recently.
Most office work still happens in a few big apps. A serious AI rival would change how documents, spreadsheets and slides are made, and who controls that market.