$250M/year Granola for plumbers
Jan-Erik Asplund
TL;DR: As AI notetakers Otter, Granola & Gong battle Zoom, Teams, and Meet over control of the online meeting, Plaud has carved out a position as the #1 hardware AI notetaker for plumbers, lawyers, doctors & others who don’t live in Zoom. Sacra estimates Plaud hit ~$250M in annualized revenue in September 2025, up 83% year-over-year. For more, check out our full report and dataset on Plaud.
We first covered the meeting AI space in November 2023 with the Gongification of SaaS, then followed up with Recall.ai at $31M/year as the "Plaid for meeting bots," Otter at $100M ARR, and Granola's bid to undercut Zoom from the OS level.
Key points on Plaud via Sacra AI:
- As AI notetakers from Otter, Fireflies & Gong took off for recording Zoom, Teams & Google Meet calls, Plaud launched in 2023 as their hardware counterpart in the form of a $159 credit-card-sized voice recorder that attaches to smartphones via MagSafe, uses LLMs to transcribe & summarize audio into meeting notes & integrates to send them into Google Drive, Office 365 or Notion. Co-founded by a former China Growth Capital VC and a Shenzhen consumer electronics factory owner, Plaud’s Kickstarter raised $1.1M from ~7,000 backers & has since shipped 1.5M+ devices across 170 countries, claiming to be the second-largest AI hardware product by volume behind only Meta's Ray-Ban glasses.
- Finding product-market fit in heavily in-person fields like healthcare, field sales & legal, Sacra estimates Plaud hit ~$250M in annualized revenue in September 2025, up 83% year-over-year, split roughly 50/50 between ~25% gross margin hardware sales (now $159–$189 per device) and higher-margin Plaud Intelligence subscriptions ($99–$240/year). Compare to fellow hardware AI notetaker Pocket (YC W26) at $27M in annualized revenue as of February 2026 (5 months post-launch), Otter at $100M ARR in March 2025, up 56% YoY, Abridge at $100M ARR in May 2025, up 900% YoY, valued at 53x on its $5.3B valuation, and “Plaid for meeting bots” Recall.ai at $31M ARR in January 2026, up 211% YoY, valued at 12.8x on its $250M valuation.
- Expanding first into wearables with the NotePin (August 2024), which can be worn as a pin, necklace or wristband, and then into software with the Plaud Desktop app for Mac & Windows (January 2026) to capture users’ virtual meetings, Plaud is building a platform that spans every recording form factor and stitches together transcripts into a single, searchable archive. With Humane shut down, Limitless’s pendant wound down post-Meta acquisition, and Friend focusing on its AI companion app, Plaud is left as the #1 AI hardware notetaker, with the upside case of serving both as 1) the primary notetaker for plumbers & field sales who work in the physical world, and 2) the “last mile” notetaker for doctors, lawyers, and others who still do meetings & consultations in person and need a hardware notetaker that can send notes into Abridge or Gong.
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