Superhuman users are processing email 2x faster with OpenAI

Superhuman has released figures showing its bet on OpenAI is paying off in a big way, with users now processing their inboxes twice as fast as before. The company, known for its premium email client, is using OpenAI’s API to power a suite of features that are seeing massive adoption. More than 85% of users have opted into the new AI tools, and engagement is not just holding steady—it’s accelerating. Use of the ‘Write with AI’ feature has grown 55% since launch, with users tapping it an average of 25 times per week.

Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra frames the problem in stark terms. He notes that roughly a billion professionals spend close to three hours a day managing email, a number that adds up to a staggering one trillion human hours annually. The company sees a huge chunk of the workforce—somewhere between 30 and 50 percent—drowning in their inboxes. For Vohra, the sheer volume of reading and writing makes email the perfect target for AI intervention. The suite now includes features that turn short prompts into full emails, rephrase messages in a user’s personal voice, and provide one-click contextual replies.

The technical partnership with OpenAI was a deliberate choice from the start. Vohra credits the startup-to-startup working relationship for a rapid development pace, with constant back-and-forth between engineers and executives. But the real clincher was the combination of security and raw performance. Because Superhuman operates inside confidential threads, OpenAI’s zero data retention policy was non-negotiable for meeting compliance requirements. On the performance side, Vohra doesn’t mince words, stating OpenAI’s models are anywhere from six months to a full year ahead of the competition in both output quality and speed.

What’s genuinely interesting here is the speed at which user behavior is changing. The Instant Reply feature alone, which drafts a response so users just hit send, is saving people more than an hour per week. Vohra’s ultimate vision is a near-autonomous agent that filters, triages, and replies to email without a human in the loop—a future he believes the success of these features proves isn’t too far off.