Grammarly Rebranded to Superhuman — and Stumbled Into a Doppelgänger Problem

Grammarly, known by millions for its browser extension with text suggestions, decided to become an AI company—and started with a rename. In October 2025, it officially took on a new brand: Superhuman. The name is borrowed from Superhuman Mail, an AI platform for working with email, which Grammarly acquired shortly before.

The problem is that Superhuman Mail is not just a service; it's a separate brand with a loyal audience, its own reputation, and recognition among professionals. When Grammarly announced the name change, confusion immediately arose on the internet: users didn't understand which company was being discussed. Two entities with the same name began to interfere with each other.

The Verge's Stevi Bonifield called what was happening a "sloppelganger saga"—a play on words combining sloppy and doppelgänger. This is an accurate definition: the rebrand looks like an attempt to appropriate someone else's identity without working out the details. Instead of a clear new image, the company got a blurred one.

This is not the first time a major tech company has used an acquisition as a springboard for a change in positioning. The logic is clear: Superhuman Mail is associated with productivity, AI, and the professional user—exactly the audience Grammarly wants to target. But the gap between strategic intent and execution turned out to be noticeable.

Grammarly as a product has existed since 2009. The company grew out of grammar checking and became one of the most widespread browser extensions in the world—hundreds of millions of installations. In recent years, it has actively added AI features: text rephrasing, tone adjustment, auto-completion. But in the race with competitors—Notion AI, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini—grammar alone is no longer enough. A new story was needed.

Except the new story so far looks unfinished. The rebrand to Superhuman without clear differentiation from Superhuman Mail created a communication mess. This is telling: in an era when every tech company is rushing to slap an "AI" label, the risk of running into your own doppelgänger has become real. What this means in practice: even a well-funded company with a product used by hundreds of millions of people can bungle what seems like a simple step—a name change.

Rebranding is not just a logo and a press release. It's legal clarity, communication strategy, and understanding what associations already exist in users' minds. Grammarly, judging by all accounts, did not complete this work.