Read AI Secures $50M in Series B Funding, Advancing Its 'Copilot Everywhere' Vision

Read AI lands $50M in new funding as it strives to become everyone's AI copilot - SiliconANGLE

Read AI lands $50M in new funding as it strives to become everyone's AI copilot The productivity-focused artificial intelligence startup Read AI Inc. said it had closed on a $50 million Series B funding round today, coming just six months after it raised $21 million via a Series A round. Today's round was led by Smash Capital and saw participation from existing Madrona and Goodwater Capital. It brings the company's total amount raised to $81 million, following its earlier seed investments. Read AI has created a generative AI-powered text, audio and video content summarization tool that enables enterprise workers to understand quickly what's happening across all of the communication and collaboration channels they use, such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Gmail, Zoom, Outlook, Salesforce and Hubspot. It explains that it wants to help accelerate the way people work by enhancing their digital interactions and making them more efficient. Its generative AI tools listen in on user's video calls on Teams, Meet and Zoom, taking notes so they can quickly summarize what's been said at the end of the call. It eliminates the hassle of taking notes or simply having to remember what was said, saving time and ensuring nothing important was missed. Read AI also provides tools to coach users so they can become better speakers. It analyzes the user's performance in meetings, then provides tips on what they can do to improve their speaking abilities, so they can be more clear and concise in future meetings. The startup's expertise also lends itself to email and messaging summarization. Users can connect their email and collaboration platform accounts to it, so it can read them all -- just as its name suggests. Doing this, it effectively unifies all of the user's communications, so it can provide them with a personalized, actionable briefing each day that lays out the tasks they need to prioritize. Coinciding with today's funding announcement, Read AI is launching a new tool called Read AI for Gmail, which is part of its new "copilots everywhere" initiative. It says the tool can help to transform Gmail into a productivity hub with smart AI summaries, a feed that provides contextual insights from previous messages and meetings, and automatic responses to emails and messages for busy workers. It's available now as a free Chrome browser extension. The company explained that Read AI for Gmail integrates directly with the user's Gmail account to streamline email management by surfacing the most relevant information relating to the user's work. For instance, if a client sends an email about an important project update, Read AI will pull related content, such as notes from earlier meetings and prior emails, to provide context around that update. It can also use that context to draft a response to the email. For lengthy email threads, it will generate a concise summary of everything that has been said, highlighting all of the key points and action items. It will also integrate contextual information from Slack, Zoom, Teams and Meet if the user has communicated with the same client on one of those channels. Read AI co-founder and Chief Executive David Shim said the introduction of Read AI for Gmail kicks off the company's vision of a copilot for everywhere you work, where your messages are connected to meetings in your inbox, and where threads can be summarized and replies quickly drafted on behalf of users. "With the launch of Read AI for Gmail, we're using your existing workflow, email and introducing an AI copilot to a platform used by billions of users," he explained. "By bringing meeting and message data directly into your inbox, we're not changing workflows, we're improving them by delivering a copilot everywhere you work." The round follows a period of rapid growth for Read AI, which says it has added more than 100,000 new users since its prior funding round. It added that it has an 81% retention rate for those new users. "In the age of AI assistants and agents, Read AI has gone from upstart to incumbent with a 720% increase in active users in the last 12 months," Shim added. Smash Capital Managing Partner Brad Twohig said he believes productivity is one of the biggest opportunities for the generative AI industry in 2025. He thinks Read AI is already the clear leader in terms of its meeting note-taking capabilities. "In the past year, Read AI has become the standard across meetings on Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams," Twohig said. "With the addition of its Slack, Hubspot and Salesforce integrations, it is set to expand its footprint in both enterprise and consumer markets with its vision of an AI copilot everywhere you work."

Read AI raises $50M to integrate its bot with Slack, email, and more

There are plenty of startups now that have AI bots that will listen to your meetings, transcribe them, make notes, and create insights. That means companies in this area must differentiate themselves by offering additional feature sets and integrations. Read AI, the startup founded by former Foursquare CEO David Shim along with Rob Williams and Elliott Waldron, is integrating its co-pilot in email, Slack and enterprise tools like Hubspot, Jira, and Confluence so it know more about your conversation about a certain project or with a certain client across the apps. To accelerate its product development, the company has 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 fundraiser comes just six months after the startup raised $21 million in Series A. Shim told TechCrunch that after its raise earlier this year, the company has had high momentum of customer growth, with more than 100,000 new accounts created everywhere. The company utilized these numbers to raise another round. " In less than six months, we've doubled our sign-ups, active users, and MRR, far surpassing even our most aggressive projections. We're leveraging this momentum to raise now, ensuring we can accelerate growth with a partner who shares our vision of an AI copilot everywhere -- delivering value not just to enterprises but to consumers at scale," he said. Shim didn't specify Read AI's valuation but said that with this round, it got an upgrade in valuation to match its growth. Brad Twohig, co-founder and managing partner at Smash Capital, said that when investing, he often looks for companies with product-led growth, and Reads fits well in that mold. "I love finding companies in spaces that both cater to large group of people and have an enterprise component at the same time," he told TechCrunch over a call. Product evolution Read AI launched an integration with email, messages, and meeting apps earlier this year. The company is today releasing a Chrome extension that could display your scheduling link, latest meeting reports, a quick add-to-meeting option, and recommendations, which are insights from meetings. The extension can also highlight key points for a lengthy 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 capabilities. What's more, the extension can also highlight quick notes from meetings or Slack messages about the same topic in the email thread. Read AI is offering the Chrome extension for free. Shim noted the latest fundraiser was another reason to develop and scale products like this and offer them without cost. "Where we're going towards is more wherever you work, we're pulling in that content, and we're giving you summaries, we're giving you recommendations. That's a bigger opportunity, but there is a bigger cost center associated with it. And so for us, we're very much focusing on growing that market while maintaining the lead that we have on the meeting note side," Shim said. Read AI's play gives you more knowledge and insight about a particular conversation, topic, or project by integrating different services and having large language models make sense of all that text. Smash Capital's Twohig believes that meeting transcripts are becoming a commodity, but Read AI's approach of deploying its copilot everywhere can turn it into a fine business. "We ran into Read AI as an assistant showing up at meetings and taking notes. But when we sat down with David, we understood a broader vision and concept of having a co-pilot anywhere. This tool can follow you through day-to-day tasks, keep helpful records, and allow you to be a better teammate." Read AI currently has 40 people on its payroll and the company aims to expand to 100 people by the end of the Q1 2025.

Seattle startup Read AI raises $50M to fuel 'copilot everywhere' vision for enterprise software

The Seattle startup, which sells enterprise productivity software tools fueled by generative AI, is adding 100,000 new accounts each week and has 75% of the Fortune 500 using its products. And it hasn't spent a single dime on marketing. The 3-year-old company announced a $50 million Series B round to accelerate growth -- just six months after announcing a separate $21 million round. Read launched in 2021 and initially positioned itself as a software tool to measure engagement and sentiment of participants on video meetings, riding pandemic-driven adoption of tools such as Zoom. It later added meeting summarization tools. But the company's vision goes beyond just meetings. Read can now analyze emails and messaging threads, in addition to video calls -- and suggests action items based on its analysis of information shared across communication channels. The focus is on building a "copilot everywhere" that works across various platforms, said Shim. For example, Read can take a meeting summary from a sales call on Zoom and push it into a CRM service such as HubSpot. Or, it can add context to a Gmail or Outlook thread by surfacing related conversations from Slack or Microsoft Teams, and create drafts based on previous email threads or video meetings with a particular recipient. Shim sees a path toward being able to offer customers predictive analytics based on the data it is analyzing, and automate how information is shared within an organization. "We're focusing on the ability to integrate with as many services as possible," he said. Shim said part of his company's growth comes from individual users who try the product for free, find value in it, and then get their colleagues onboard. Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona, said Read's traction reminds him of another enterprise software company that his venture capital firm backed. "They are similar to Smartsheet in the early years as they acquired essentially all of these customers without having a sales rep and they are seeing strong evidence of 'land and expand' patterns with customers," McIlwain said. Read charges between $15 to $40 per user, per month. It also offers a free tier. Shim did not reveal revenue metrics. The company is not profitable. Read AI's competitors include built-in tools from platform companies such as Microsoft, Google, Zoom, and others. Its tools work with those platforms, but Read is aiming to differentiate itself in part by working across platforms. There are also a number of startups building similar meeting summary tools, such as Otter, Seattle-area startup Alice, and Fathom, which just raised $17 million. Investors are pouring gobs of cash into AI startups, betting on a technological wave that some say will be bigger than the internet. Competition is fierce, not just from up-and-coming early stage companies but also established tech giants building their own AI models and products, particularly in the enterprise sector. There are various tools aiming to make employees more efficient, though it's up for debate in regard to actual value being offered thus far. Bradley Twohig, managing partner and co-founder at Smash Capital, said his growth-stage firm takes a selective approach to investing in AI startups, making sure that there is an "enormous amount of value" being provided to customers. "The kind of scale and retention of the user base at Read was quite impressive," said Twohig, who joined Read's board. Twohig added: "The number of products and people investing in things that are akin to what Read looks like today is more indicative of the scale of the market, more than anything else." Read has about 40 employees and plans to double its headcount next year. Total funding to date is $81 million.

AI startup Read announces new funding at $450 million valuation

(Reuters) - Read AI, a productivity and AI automation startup, said on Monday it was valued at $450 million after a series B funding round led by Smash Capital. The company raised $50 million in the latest round, which also saw participation from existing investors Madrona and Goodwater Capital, six months after it raised $21 million in series A. Heightened enthusiasm around the generative artificial intelligence technology has helped AI startups attract funding from well-known private equity and venture capital firms. Read AI provides a platform that seeks to improve meeting efficiency through note-taking, summarization and transcription features. Separately, the company announced the launch of "Read AI for Gmail", a free Chrome extension that can bring information from other applications such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom in one streamlined place, reducing the need to switch between apps. By introducing free features like "Read AI for Gmail", the company's goal is to drive the platform's adoption and expects to boost enterprise sign-ups as it adds more functionalities, David Shim, co-founder and CEO of Read AI, told Reuters. Shim also said the funding would keep the company going for the next few years and expects to use the proceeds to increase headcount across engineering, data science and business teams. (Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)