Pocket raises $11M in guess on rising demand for AI note-taking units

Unlike AI devices like Rabbit or Humane, corporations constructing devoted devices for recording and transcribing conferences have truly seen some traction. The market is big — although a bit constrained, as smartphones work high-quality for such duties when paired with note-taking apps — and startups like Plaud, Mobvoi, Anker, Viaim, and Vibe have jumped in to take benefit.

In this crowded market, Y Combinator-backed Pocket thinks it may win with its design, packaging, and pricing. The firm sells a $129 credit score card-shaped puck, which sticks to the again of your cellphone, and guarantees limitless recordings, transcriptions, and to-do objects, no subscription required.

The startup says it has bought greater than 130,000 items since launching final 12 months, and that momentum has now helped it rating $11 million in funding from Accel, Y Combinator, and ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder Mati Staniszewski.

Pocket’s core concept isn’t novel: You stick the puck to the again of your cellphone, activate recording throughout a gathering, and it’ll document and transcribe your conversations.

Users can then ask the accompanying cellphone app to generate summaries of conferences, ask an AI assistant questions on conferences, create thoughts maps, and remodel the textual content into completely different templates.

While the fundamental transcription comes free with the puck, the corporate sells a $200-per-year plan to unlock limitless AI summaries, queries to the AI assistant, day by day highlights, and file attachments.

“You can record on the go, offline, and in the field, which is exactly how lawyers, salespeople, doctors, real estate agents, construction workers, and students use Pocket today,” Accel accomplice Cecilia Wang stated. “Not only are people present rather than shifting focus to take notes, but more information and insights also get captured than ever before, which otherwise would have been lost. Over time, that accumulation of insights is really valuable: one central place where your ideas, conversations, and thoughts live, rather than scattered and lost,” Wang stated.

Pocket was based by Akshay Narisetti, who was a founding member of rival note-taking startup Omi; and Gabriel Dymowski, who beforehand based a blockchain-based doc administration startup.

“We thought every meeting notetaker was built for online conversations, but nothing was geared towards real-life talk. AI really needs a lot of context to work better for us, and a lot of that context exists offline,” Narisetti informed TechCrunch.

For its enterprise prospects, Pocket provides customized workflow administration, webhook help, and integration with apps akin to Google Calendar, OneDrive, Google Drive, Obsidian, Claude, and Cursor. Plus, there’s a mannequin context protocol (MCP) server to attach its AI assistant to different databases.

Like different assembly notetakers, Pocket needs to assist folks automate duties like drafting emails, updating CRMs, and creating motion objects based mostly on conferences. The firm is banking on delivery software program quick to allow these integrations.

Devices like Pocket undoubtedly face competitors from software program gamers akin to Granola, Zoom, Fireflies, Otter, and Read AI. However, device-first corporations like Plaud, which is on observe to generate annual income of $100 million by way of software program gross sales, are additionally constructing enterprise capability together with desktop apps for digital conferences.