Docusign has lost almost a quarter of its market value this year on concern that new AI tools could help customers create in-house version of the software it sells.
The company is trying to head off this risk by integrating with the most disruptive AI player of all, OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Docusign is bringing its contract-management technology directly into ChatGPT, letting users draft, manage, and sign agreements without leaving the popular AI chat interface.
Docusign's new ChatGPT integration is an effort to align with OpenAI instead of competing with it. That could reassure investors that its SaaS offerings can remain indispensable in an AI-driven world. Docusign shares jumped about 4% after the news.
At its annual Docusign Discover developer on Thursday, the software company announced that its Intelligent Agreement Management platform will soon connect to ChatGPT through the open-source Model Context Protocol.
The integration means users, and eventually AI agents, will be able to handle contracts end-to-end inside ChatGPT, from drafting purchase orders to identifying expiring vendor agreements and sending them for electronic signature.
Docusign's IAM system powers more than one billion agreements a year across 1.7 million organizations. Embedding it in ChatGPT could make contract workflows as simple as typing a prompt such as "Create a one-year residential lease in Dallas for $2,000 per month" or "Find all contracts expiring this quarter and start renegotiations."
Docusign stock slumped recently after OpenAI showed off several in-house software tools it had developed using AI. One was even called DocuGPT. It automates Parses contracts into searchable data, flagging unusual terms for finance teams, a potential threat to DocuSign's contract analysis features.
The partnership underscores how AI is blurring the lines between conversation and execution, moving business users from "chat to contract" in one secure flow. It also positions Docusign as one of the first enterprise-grade agreement-management providers to integrate with OpenAI's rapidly expanding ecosystem, including the 4 million-plus developers using OpenAI's AgentKit tools.
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