AI-powered notetaking instrument Granola has been on a roll. The startup’s seen a steep uptick in utilization because it launched a 12 months in the past, principally due to phrase of mouth amongst VCs and founders, however an enormous driver appears to be the truth that persons are utilizing it for doing greater than its core pitch — automated notetaking for conferences.
Granola’s co-founder, Chris Pedregal, instructed TechCrunch that the corporate’s customers are more and more utilizing Granola for taking private notes, which helps them make all their info, each from work and in any other case, out there to the app’s AI to parse and floor insights from. “[People] have Granola open all day because they have a lot of meetings, so it’s like […] where they’re starting to live,” he stated.
Pedregal stated Granola’s natural recognition among the many tech crowd and diversifying use circumstances has helped its person base develop 10% each week since its launch, although he didn’t specify what number of customers it at present has.
Off the again of that speedy progress and recognition, Granola on Wednesday stated it has raised $43 million in a Collection B funding spherical led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross’s enterprise agency, NFDG, at a valuation of $250 million.
The spherical additionally noticed participation from present buyers Lightspeed and Spark, in addition to angel buyers together with Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch, Replit’s Amjad Masad, Shopify’s Tobias Lütke, and Linear’s Karri Saarinen. The spherical brings the corporate’s complete funding raised to $67 million.
Alongside this funding, Granola can also be extending its remit past its present single-user focus to make itself extra helpful for companies: It’s launching a brand new collaboration function that lets customers share transcripts and notes with teammates, and allow the app’s AI take to benefit of a broader pool of notes and particulars to floor insights.
Customers in a corporation can create customized folders for numerous collaborative use circumstances like gross sales calls, buyer suggestions, and hiring. The app will even let customers share assembly notes with individuals who don’t use Granola to allow them to chat with its AI and ask it questions.
Different assembly transcription and notetaking apps, equivalent to Learn AI, Fireflies, and Otter, already supply related shared-space options. Pedregal, although, says Granola is for greater than notetaking. “I think how Granola differs from other notetakers is that it is very personal and you are in control all the time. You can edit notes at any point. It is not about just capturing a meeting, but it is a space where you can work, even post meetings,” he stated.
Earlier this month, Granola up to date its app to allow customers to ask the AI bot questions on all conferences it had recorded. Constructing on that, the corporate will now enable customers to ask questions on particular folders as effectively.
Granola’s new collaborative focus is a part of a broader pattern — many AI-powered assembly transcription and notetaking instruments are increasing their focus and constructing integrations with different instruments as they attempt to change into a hub that shops and lets customers search via data from numerous sources.
In the meantime, productiveness suites are introducing transcription instruments to maintain prospects from having to make use of different apps for that goal. As an illustration, Notion simply yesterday launched an AI assembly notetaking instrument.
Lightspeed’s Mike Mignano believes that Granola has an edge on this house due to its interface and person expertise.
“Since the start, the company has had the right mix of AI transcript and human control of taking notes. Now that they are building context across the meetings and making the notes shareable, the product has become stronger. With these features, Granola will have long-term context for users and teams, kicking off network effects for the startup,” he stated.
