Sage
Sage (sage.is), operated by Startr LLC, is an open-source AI workspace that unifies chat, tasks, docs, and files for small teams, startups, educational institutions, and developers via its AGPL-3.0 Sage AI-UI platform.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2023
- HeadquartersNew York, United States
- Headcount5,001–10,000
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Sage does
Sage (sage.is), operated by Startr LLC (Wyoming, USA), is an open-source AI platform company that consolidates chat, tasks, documents, and file management into a single AI-powered workspace. Its flagship product, Sage AI-UI (v2.2.0 on GitHub under AGPL-3.0), is positioned as a private, self-hostable replacement for the Slack/Jira/Asana/Trello/Dropbox stack, with 256-bit AES encryption at rest, TLS 1.2 in transit, OAuth 2.0, and on-premise deployment options to address regulated and privacy-sensitive buyers. The company serves three primary customer segments — small teams and startups, educational institutions (Sage Education, with on-premise and private-cloud deployment), and open-source developers — and monetizes through a freemium open-source tier, an application-based Incubation program that delivers roughly $250,000 of AI engineering and hosting value per accepted team on multi-year contracts, and an annual Education program subscription.
The business is co-founded by Izzy Plante (CEO) and Alexander Somma (CTO) and is backed by Startr (formerly OpenCo), a tech incubator operating since 2007 that has reported 18 consecutive years of profitability with zero debt. Distribution is primarily self-serve via GitHub for the open-source tier, with direct sales for the Education and Incubation programs. In 2025–2026 Sage made two acquisitions — Criterion (HCM/payroll, 80,000+ users across 10+ countries, October 2025) and Doyen AI (AI-powered financial data migration, April 2026) — and added a CPO (ex-Salesforce GM post-Informatica) and a CSO (ex-McKinsey Senior Partner) to professionalize product and corporate strategy. Note that some inputs in the dataset reference Sage Group plc (a separate UK-listed ERP company), including executive Steve Hare and products like Sage Intacct; these are not part of sage.is and are excluded from this analysis.
Sage firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Sage
- Legal name
- Startr LLC
- Website
- https://sage.is
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2023
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 5,001–10,000 employees
- Short description
- Sage (sage.is), operated by Startr LLC, is an open-source AI workspace that unifies chat, tasks, docs, and files for small teams, startups, educational institutions, and developers via its AGPL-3.0 Sage AI-UI platform.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Sage industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Open Source AI Project Management Software
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (513210), Educational Support Services (61171), Custom Computer Programming Services (541511)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- AI Application Enablement Platforms (Copilot/Agent Frameworks, SDKs) (HDAEANAJ)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- AI Integration & Orchestration Platforms (Connectors, Workflow, iPaaS for AI) (HDAEANAI), AI/ML Engineering & Model Development Services (BPAEAHAF), AI Tutoring Systems (Conversational Tutors, Homework Helpers) (EDAFAFAC)
Keywords
Where Sage is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- New York
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices2 records
Markets served
Sage business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Sage Incubation Program: Application-based incubation program providing AI engineering support, hosting infrastructure, and technical capital to selected teams
- Education Program: Licensing and support services for educational institutions deploying Sage AI platform
- Self-hosted Open Source: Free open-source (AGPL-3.0) version with community support, monetized through optional premium services and partnerships
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Open Source - Free self-hosted AI platform |
| Subscription | Multi-year contract | Idea Incubator - Technical Capital Program |
| Subscription | Annual | Education Program - For Schools and Institutions |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels4 records
Sage product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Sage (sage.is) provides an open-source AI platform that combines chat, tasks, docs, and files into a single unified workspace for teams, replacing multiple separate tools (Slack, Jira, Asana, Trello, Dropbox). The platform is offered as a free AGPL-3.0 self-hosted open-source product, plus two paid programs: Sage Education (a private AI solution for educational institutions with custom branding and on-premise hosting) and Sage Incubation (a Technical Capital program providing $250k of AI engineering support, hosting, infrastructure, and developer resources to teams building AI applications).
Product overview
Sage is an open-source, private, and secure AI platform for teams that defines its own category: Open Source AI Project Management. The platform consists of Sage AI-UI (an open-source AI web interface for team collaboration), Sage Education (AI tools for educational institutions), and Sage Incubation (Technical Capital program for AI startups). Sage replaces multiple separate tools including chat (Slack/Teams), task management (Jira/Asana/Trello), and file storage (Dropbox) with a unified AI-powered workspace. The platform is available as self-hosted open-source (AGPL-3.0), managed cloud, or hybrid deployment, with MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations supporting invoicing, accounting, time tracking, reporting, planning, asset management, contracts, and proposals.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Sage AI-UI: Open-source AI web UI platform for teams, version 2.2.0 available on GitHub
- Sage.Education
- Sage Incubation
- Sage Open Source
Products and services
- Sage AI-UI Open-source AI web interface (v2.2.0) available on GitHub that provides teams with AI-powered chat, task management, document handling, and collaboration tools. Replaces multiple separate products including Slack, Teams, Jira, Asana, Trello, and Dropbox with a unified AI-powered workspace.
- Sage Education Complete AI solution for educational institutions and students building AI skills, featuring secure and private deployment options, open-source education license with no lock-in, custom branding, and priority support for classroom and research applications. Verification required for accredited institutions.
- Sage Incubation (Idea Incubator) Technical Capital Solution providing AI engineering and development support for teams wanting to build and host AI applications. Includes hosting and infrastructure, developer support team access, custom integration and webhooks, 10TB Over Drive Storage, and dedicated manager access. Approximately $250,000 value of AI engineering and development support per accepted team. Applications reviewed quarterly.
Quantifiable outcome
- 99.99% uptime maintained across two decades
- +1 more outcomes
Companies that use Sage
Customer profileNamed customers3 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Sage technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration8 records
AI capability8 records
Feature4 records
Sage partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
One partnership is on record.
- Startr (Startr.Cloud/OpenCo)coreStartr is the parent company and tech incubator behind Sage, providing backing since 2007. Sage.is AI-UI, Sage Education, and Technical Capital are products of Startr LLC. Startr has been profitable for 18 straight years with zero debt.
Scale indicators3 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Sage competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Asana: Asana is a publicly traded work management platform with Asana Intelligence AI features. It is one of the named incumbents Sage explicitly replaces and competes against at the project management layer for mid-market and enterprise teams.
- Slack: Slack (Salesforce) is the dominant team chat platform and one of the four tools Sage AI-UI explicitly aims to consolidate. Its Slack AI features make it a direct functional competitor in the chat and team collaboration layer.
- Atlassian (Jira / Confluence): Atlassian's Jira and Confluence products dominate software team project management and documentation, both with Atlassian Intelligence AI features. Sage explicitly names Jira among the tools it replaces, making Atlassian a core displaced incumbent.
Direct peers
- ClickUp: ClickUp positions as an "everything app for work" combining tasks, docs, chat, whiteboards, and goals with ClickUp Brain AI. It is the closest commercial analog to Sage's "replace Slack, Jira, Asana, Trello, Dropbox" consolidation thesis.
- Linear: Linear is an opinionated issue tracking and project management tool favored by startups and product teams, with AI-assisted triage and planning features. It directly overlaps Sage's task and project management capabilities for the same SMB/developer audience.
- Notion: Notion is a unified workspace combining docs, tasks, wikis, and databases with Notion AI. It competes directly with Sage AI-UI for the same team productivity use case, though Notion is closed-source and SaaS-only whereas Sage emphasizes open-source and self-hosting.
Emerging players
- ToolJet: ToolJet is an open-source low-code platform for building internal tools with AI integrations and self-hosting. It competes in the same open-source AI app-building niche that Sage's Incubation program targets for early-stage teams.
- Appsmith: Appsmith is an open-source platform for building internal applications with self-hosted deployment. It is a comparable open-source, developer-focused alternative in the broader AI-enabled app building category Sage serves.
- LangChain: LangChain provides open-source frameworks and platforms for building LLM-powered applications. It overlaps with Sage at the AI application enablement layer — the same category as Sage's agent and incubation capabilities — though LangChain is more developer-framework and less end-user-product oriented.
- n8n: n8n is an open-source workflow automation platform with fair-code licensing and AI node integrations. It overlaps with Sage on the open-source, integration-driven positioning and serves a similar developer/SMB audience building AI applications.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Sage social profiles
Digital presenceSage compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance3 records
Sage financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Sage leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles2 records
Sage subsidiaries and ownership
Company hierarchySubsidiaries2 records
Sage funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors1 record
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Sage M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Sage
What does Sage do?
Sage (sage.is) provides an open-source AI platform that combines chat, tasks, docs, and files into a single unified workspace for teams, replacing multiple separate tools (Slack, Jira, Asana, Trello, Dropbox). The platform is offered as a free AGPL-3.0 self-hosted open-source product, plus two paid programs: Sage Education (a private AI solution for educational institutions with custom branding and on-premise hosting) and Sage Incubation (a Technical Capital program providing $250k of AI engineering support, hosting, infrastructure, and developer resources to teams building AI applications).
Is Sage a public or private company?
Sage is a private company. It is classified as corporate owned and is currently operating.
When was Sage founded?
Sage was founded in 2023. It employs 5,001 to 10,000 people.
Where is Sage based?
Sage is headquartered in New York, United States, in the North America region.
How does Sage make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Sage Incubation Program is the primary driver. The others are education Program and self-hosted Open Source.
Who are Sage's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Asana, Slack and Atlassian (Jira / Confluence). Direct peers are ClickUp, Linear and Notion. Emerging players are ToolJet, Appsmith, LangChain and n8n.
Does Sage have an API?
Yes. Sage has a full-featured API with clean REST APIs, SDKs, webhooks, and CLIs. Companies have written custom integrations using the API. Sage's open-source tech stack allows developers to build their own solutions. Developers can onboard in minutes with straightforward documentation. Developer documentation is at github.com/Startr.
What industry is Sage in?
Sage's product category is Open Source AI Project Management Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAEANAJ, AI Application Enablement Platforms (Copilot/Agent Frameworks, SDKs), with a secondary code of HDAEANAI, AI Integration & Orchestration Platforms (Connectors, Workflow, iPaaS for AI). Its NAICS code is 513210 and its SIC code is 7372.