Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to launch Ndoc, an Office rival

Rohit Patel, a former director at Meta Superintelligence Labs, is leaving the company after eight years to launch Ndoc, a startup he describes as an AI-native replacement for Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. He worked on AI evaluations and reinforcement learning at Meta.

Patel joins a series of notable Meta departures, including Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, AI researcher Andrew Tulloch and Emily Dalton Smith, head of product for AI-for-Work.

One workspace instead of many tools

Ndoc is meant to replace the patchwork of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Tableau, Replit and copy-pasting from ChatGPT. It combines three tabs in one layout: Stage holds slide decks, dashboards, simulations or mini apps; Narrative contains analyses, numbered citations and generated figures; Model houses the datasets and Python scripts underneath.

The design reflects Patel's focus on whether AI output can be trusted. Users can inspect the Python scripts behind a document and ask the built-in chat to explain what a script does or where a formula sits. "There's nothing hidden behind the curtain here," Patel said. Users can upload a dataset, request an analysis and a written narrative, and set audience, tone and memory. Colleagues can view documents without signing up.

Patel says Ndoc runs on a mix of open source models that he built and fine-tuned, which he says makes it considerably cheaper to operate than products built on frontier models. Documents can be exported as a single ".ndoc.html" file that opens in any browser, a format he plans to open-source.

A big bet for a small team

The company has three people and no funding. Patel says he wants proof that users love the product before raising money. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, SpaceXAI and Google all offer enterprise tools that plug into existing office apps, and OpenAI launched Space, a shared workspace inside ChatGPT, last month. Patel concedes Space could be a threat but argues the labs are simply bolting AI onto spreadsheets. To ease switching, Ndoc offers connectors that import data from existing tools.

Ndoc is running an enterprise pilot and opening an alpha to a limited number of customers from its wait list. Signing up is free, with customers paying for usage and tokens. A beta is expected in the coming weeks and a full launch is planned for next year.