Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to take on Microsoft Office and Google Workspace

After eight years developing AI for Meta, Rohit Patel is departing the company, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The former director at Meta Superintelligence Labs has launched Ndoc, a startup he’s pitching as an AI-native replacement for Microsoft Office suite or Google Workspace.

Patel is the latest in a handful of high-profile departures from Meta following the exits of Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, AI researcher Andrew Tulloch, and Head of Product for AI-for-Work Emily Dalton Smith.

Patel designed Ndoc to be more than just another AI tool layered onto an existing workflow. The goal is to replace the fragmented way people work across tools like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Tableau, Replit, and “ChatGPT copy-paste” with one unified workspace that all colleagues can access, even if they’re not signed up for Ndoc. 

Ndoc brings three components together in one layout. The Stage tab is where presentations of key findings live, like slide decks, dashboards, simulations, or mini apps. The Narrative tab features analyses, numbered citations, generated figures, and generally the “why” behind the numbers. The Model tab is where underlying datasets and Python scripts are housed.