Sage

Open Source AI Project Management Softwaresage.is

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

Open source AI
AI project management
Team collaboration platform
Technical incubation program
AI education platform

Where Sage is headquartered

Location

Headquarters

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 offering

Core 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 profile

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Sage technology and API

Technology

Technology 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 signal

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

Startr (Startr.Cloud/OpenCo)coreOthersStartr 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 assessment

Broad 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 compliance and trust

Trust signal

Compliance3 records

Sage financial estimates

Financial estimate

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Sage leadership team

Management profile

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Sage subsidiaries and ownership

Company hierarchy

Subsidiaries2 records

Sage funding detail

Funding detail

Funding 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 investment

M&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?

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.