AI-powered note-taking software Granola has been on a roll. The startup’s seen a steep uptick in utilization because it launched a yr in the past, largely due to phrase of mouth amongst VCs and founders, however a giant driver appears to be the truth that persons are utilizing it for doing greater than its core pitch — automated note-taking for conferences.
Granola’s co-founder, Chris Pedragel, informed 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, accessible to the app’s AI to parse and floor insights from. “[People] have Granola open all day as a result of they’ve lots of conferences, so it’s like […] the place they’re beginning to dwell,” he stated.
Pedragel stated Granola’s natural reputation among the many tech crowd and diversifying use-cases has helped its person base develop 10% each week since its launch, although he didn’t specify what number of customers it at the moment has.
Off the again of that fast development and recognition, Granola on Wednesday stated it has raised $43 million in a Sequence 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 traders Lightspeed and Spark, in addition to angel traders together with Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch, Replit’s Amjad Masad, Shopify’s Tobi Lutke, and Linear’s Karri Saarinen. The spherical brings the corporate’s complete funding raised to $67 million.
Alongside this funding, Granola can 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 varied collaborative use instances like gross sales calls, buyer suggestions and hiring. The app may also 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 note-taking apps, similar to Learn AI, Fireflies and Otter, already supply related shared house options. Pedregal, although, says Granola is for greater than note-taking. “I feel how Granola differs from different notetakers is that it is extremely private and you might be in management on a regular basis. You possibly can edit notes at any level. It’s not about simply capturing a gathering, however it’s a house the place you may work, even submit conferences,” he stated.
Earlier this month, Granola up to date its app to allow customers to ask the AI bot questions about all meetings it had recorded. Constructing on that, the corporate will now enable customers to ask questions on particular folders as properly.
Granola’s new collaborative focus is a part of a broader development — many AI-powered assembly transcription and note-taking instruments are increasing their focus and building integrations with other tools as they attempt to turn into a hub that shops and lets customers search by information from varied sources.
In the meantime, productiveness suites are introducing transcription instruments to maintain prospects from having to make use of different apps for that goal. For example, Notion simply yesterday launched an AI assembly note-taking software.
Lightspeed’s Mike Mignano believes that Granola has an edge on this house due to its interface and person expertise.
“For the reason that begin, the corporate has had the right combination of AI transcript and human management of taking notes. Now that they’re constructing context throughout the conferences and making the notes shareable, the product has turn into stronger. With these options, Granola could have long-term context for customers and groups, kicking off community results for the startup,” he stated.