Plaud AI notetaker hits $100M revenue milestone as company plans autonomous AI agent wearable

Plaud says its software business topped $100M in ARR after shipping over 2M AI notetakers

There aren't many success stories to refer to when it comes to AI hardware. Plaud, which makes AI-powered notetakers, is trying to become one by targeting professionals who take a lot of meetings. The company said it has sold more than 2 million of its devices, including Plaud Pins and credit-card-styled gadgets that stick on the back of the phone. It also said that its subscription business has reached over $100 million in annualized revenue run rate. Plaud pointed out that many AI companies often rely on digital documents and prompts typed from memories. Its argument is that its devices, which don't have any screens, help people have conversations in real life and recall important points along with summaries and action items later. "Most AI companies have scaled through software behind a screen. We took a different path. The conversations that actually move things forward don't happen on a keyboard. We built the interface for the post-screen world. And the market validated it," said Nathan Xu, co-founder and CEO of Plaud. Last year, the company launched the $179 Plaud Pro, and this year, it added the new Plaud Pin S at a similar price. Besides hardware, the company has accelerated its software development, too. Earlier this year, it launched a desktop app that can take Granola-style notes via system audio for online meetings. Last month, it also introduced Plaud Teams with shared memory to target enterprises. Plaud users can buy the hardware and get 300 minutes of transcription for free. However, if someone has many meetings a day, the free limit is likely to run out quickly. For extra minutes and other features, users can get monthly, annual, or add-on plans. Xu told TechCrunch that its revenue is largely powered by nearly 50% of the device users upgrading from the basic plan to the pro or unlimited plans. The company doesn't yet sell standalone software subscriptions. That means, typically, it's the users who own a Plaud device who are buying its paid plans. The meeting note-taking hardware market has a lot of competition, including accessories company Anker, Transsion-backed Viaim, Sequoia China-backed Vibe, and YC-backed Pocket.

Forget basic transcriptions: An upcoming wearable wants to power autonomous AI agents

Driven by its two million global users, Plaud projects an eye-popping $500 million in sales for 2026, even though half the year has already passed. While the experiences with the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 left many wondering if dedicated consumer AI hardware was dead on arrival, one company has quietly been proving that there is real money to be made in ambient voice capture. Plaud Inc., the startup behind a successful lineup of AI-powered note-taking devices, is planning to launch a brand-new wearable device later this year that integrates directly with AI agents. According to a Bloomberg report, Plaud's upcoming wearable marks a strategic shift for the startup, moving from purely reactive transcription tools to hardware designed to feed data into autonomous AI agents. The ambitious product roadmap comes with massive financial expectations: the company projects an eye-popping $500 million in sales for 2026 -- even with half the year already gone! Specifics regarding the new wearable's price, design, or exact release date remain under wraps for now. However, Plaud's co-founder and CEO, Mr. Nathan Xu, says the new wearable will have a battery that lasts at least eight hours, if not 12. The device could also have cellular connectivity, so users can access its AI features more quickly and avoid friction with Plaud's current hardware lineup. The company is also working on a few experiments where Plaud's AI can gradually learn more about its users and suggest more personalized responses over time, similar to how ChatGPT works. Plaud has already managed to carve out a surprisingly lucrative niche with its existing hardware, including the credit-card-sized Plaud Note, which snaps to the back of a phone via MagSafe, and the pill-shaped Plaud NotePin, which can be worn as a brooch, pendant, or wristband. Both devices start at a relatively accessible $159 and rely on a companion smartphone app to transcribe and summarize audio. What separates Plaud from its struggling hardware peers is its focus on a clear utility: local, reliable ambient capture for busy professionals. Rather than ambitiously trying to replace the smartphone, Plaud treats its current hardware as a specialized input pipeline for models like GPT, Claude, and Gemini. As importantly, Plaud's current business model doesn't entirely gatekeep its core functionality behind a monthly subscription paywall, offering a free tier with 300 minutes of transcription per month. This has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry (albeit at the cost of recurring revenue), allowing the company to build a hardware footprint that it now intends to leverage. This strategy is paying off as the company has quietly amassed over two million global users. Interestingly, Plaud's business is heavily concentrated in just three major regions, with the US, Japan, and Europe accounting for nearly 80% of its total market share.