Open AI is acquiring Ona
What Conviction Looks Like: Celebrating Ona’s Next Chapter
Today, we’re celebrating an important milestone for Ona and its founders as the company joins forces with one of the world’s leading AI organizations, OpenAI.
For many people, this story begins with Ona. For us, it began much earlier.
Back in 2020, when we first invested, the company was called Gitpod.
The vision was deceptively simple: eliminate one of software development’s most persistent frustrations. Every developer knows the phrase, “it works on my machine.” Gitpod set out to make that phrase obsolete by creating cloud-based development environments that were reproducible, secure, and instantly available. What sounds obvious today was far from obvious then.
What attracted us wasn’t just the product. It was the conviction.
Johannes, Sven, Jan, Moritz, Christian, and the broader team saw a future that many others couldn’t yet see. They believed software development would increasingly move away from local machines and toward programmable, cloud-native environments. They were right.
Over the coming years, Gitpod helped redefine how developers think about their workspace. Hundreds of thousands of developers adopted the platform. Major enterprises embraced the model. A new category emerged.
But what impressed us most was what happened next.
Many companies spend years defending the success they’ve already created.
The Gitpod team chose a different path.
As AI began transforming software engineering (and everything else), they asked a difficult question: if we were starting this company today, what would we build?
The answer ultimately led to Ona.
The transition from Gitpod to Ona wasn’t a rebrand. It was a willingness to challenge their own assumptions. The team recognized that the next decade of software development wouldn’t simply be about better tools for developers. It would be about developers working alongside increasingly capable software agents. The role of the engineer would evolve from implementer to orchestrator, from keyboarder to conductor.
That takes courage.
Founders are often told to stay the course. Sometimes the harder and more important decision is knowing when the future requires a new course altogether.
Throughout this journey, what remained constant was the quality of the people. Their intellectual honesty. Their ambition. Their willingness to rethink first principles. Their determination to build what comes next rather than optimize what already exists.
At Crane, we always say, and believe, that venture investing is “human first.”
Products evolve. Markets change. Technology shifts.
What endures is the ability of exceptional founders to learn faster than everyone else.
This acquisition is a recognition of that ability.
It is a testament to a team that helped shape one generation of developer infrastructure and then had the conviction to reinvent itself for the next.
To Johannes, Christian, Sven, Jan, Moritz, and everyone who contributed to this journey: congratulations.
Thank you for allowing us to be part of the story. We were fortunate to be among the first to believe.
Today, we’re simply proud to celebrate what you’ve built.
View here: LinkedIn Post
— Krishna Visvanathan
Co-founder and Partner, Crane Venture Partners