Many startups now have AI bots that will listen to your meetings, transcribe them, take notes, and create insights. This means that companies in this space need to differentiate themselves by offering additional feature sets and integrations.
Read AI, the startup founded by former Foursquare CEO David Shim with Rob Williams and Elliott Waldron, is integrating its co-pilot into messaging, Slack and enterprise tools like Hubspot, Jira and Confluence to learn more about your conversation on a certain project or with a certain client across applications.
To accelerate its product development, the company raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Smash Capital with participation from existing investors Madrona and Goodwater Capital. Notably, the Series B fundraising comes just six months after the startup raised $21 million in Series A.
Shim told TechCrunch that after its increase earlier this year, the company has seen strong customer growth, with more than 100,000 new accounts created across the board. The company used these numbers to launch another funding round.
“In less than six months, we have doubled our registrations, active users and MRR, far exceeding even our most aggressive projections. We’re taking this momentum to expand now, ensuring we can accelerate growth with a partner who shares our vision of an AI co-pilot everywhere, bringing value not only to businesses but also to consumers on a large scale,” he said.
Shim did not specify Read AI’s valuation, but said that with this round, its valuation had been improved to match its growth.
Brad Twohig, co-founder and managing partner of Smash Capital, said that when he invests, he often looks for companies with product-driven growth, and Reads fits that mold well.
“I like to find companies in spaces that both cater to a large group of people and at the same time have a corporate component,” he told TechCrunch in a call.
Product evolution
Read AI launched integration with email, messaging, and meeting apps earlier this year. The company is releasing a Chrome extension today that could show your scheduling link, latest meeting reports, a quick add to meeting option, and recommendations, which are information from meetings.
The extension can also highlight key points in a long thread. It can also help you create a draft by keeping all emails, messages, and meetings across platforms in context. Other email clients like Shortwave and Superhuman also have these features.
Additionally, the extension can also highlight quick notes from meetings or Slack messages on the same topic in the discussion thread.
Read AI offers the Chrome extension for free. Shim noted that the latest fundraiser was another reason to develop and evolve products like this and offer them for free.
“Where we’re going is more wherever you work, we’re pulling that content, and we’re giving you summaries, we’re giving you recommendations. This is a larger opportunity, but it results in a larger cost center. And so for us, we’re really focused on growing that market while maintaining the lead that we have on the meeting notes side,” Shim said.
Read AI’s game gives you more knowledge and information about a particular conversation, topic, or project by integrating different services and enabling large language models to make sense of all that text.
Smash Capital’s Twohig believes meeting transcripts are becoming a commodity, but Read AI’s approach of deploying its co-pilot everywhere can make it a bargain.
“We encountered Read AI as an assistant who attended meetings and took notes. But when we sat down with David, we understood a broader vision and concept of having a co-pilot anywhere. This tool can track you through your daily tasks, keep useful records, and enable you to be a better teammate.
Read AI currently has 40 people on staff and the company aims to reach 100 people by the end of the first quarter of 2025.