Jasper, the generative AI startup for marketing teams, has reduced its internal valuation by 20 percent from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, The Information reported on Thursday. On the same day, Jasper’s co-founder Dave Rogenmoser announced that he was stepping down as company’s CEO and has hired former Dropbox president Timothy Youngto lead the business. Earlier this year, the startup also downsized its staff.

The startup that describes itself as an AI copilot for marketing teams had raised $125 million in October last year at a valuation of $1.5 billion. It was one of the first generative AI startups built on top of OpenAI’s APIs to have become a unicorn.

As we have previously reported, Jasper uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 on the backend to empower individuals and teams in generating various forms of content, including social media posts, blog articles, product copy, and more.

It offers these tools through a web-based chatbot, browser extension, and an API. The pricing for Jasper is set at $49 per month for individuals and $125 per month for teams.

Since the launch of ChatGPT, the startup has faced stiff competition from the firm whose API underpins its software. With over 70,000 customers, Jasper generated a revenue of $45 million in 2021 and was expected to close 2022 with $75 million.

It is unclear if they hit that number but according to The Information, they were expected to do $140 million in annual recurring revenue in 2023 and have now slashed the forecast by over 30 percent, indicating that the revenue for this year would fall be just short of $100 million.

Although this implies a 33 percent increase in the company’s year-over-year revenue, it also signifies a slowdown in growth. If Jasper managed to generate $75 million in 2022, that would represent a 67 percent year-over-year growth. So, the growth rate has decreased by over 50 percent.

However, the bigger problem for Jasper is how it reinvents itself amidst this competition with OpenAI. The startup has an event scheduled for October 28, during which its new CEO will “lay out his vision for the next chapter of generative AI in marketing and reveal a major product release from Jasper.”

This suggests a pivot, but we’ll have to wait to see.