Otter.ai
Headquarters
Mountain View, CAFounded
2016CEO / Founder
Sam LiangEmployees
51-200Funding
Series B — $63MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.5/10Website
otter.ai
Profile updated
About Otter.ai
Otter.ai develops artificial intelligence-powered transcription and meeting assistant software. The company was founded in 2016 by Sam Liang and Yun Fu and is headquartered in Mountain View, California. The platform uses machine learning to provide real-time speech-to-text transcription services for meetings, interviews, and other audio content.
Otter.ai's core product offers automated transcription with speaker identification, keyword search, and integration with video conferencing platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The service provides meeting summaries, action item extraction, and collaborative note-taking features. The company serves individual professionals, teams, and enterprise customers across industries including media, education, and business services.
Otter.ai has raised approximately $63 million in funding across multiple rounds, including a $50 million Series B round led by Horizons Ventures in 2021. The company previously raised funding from investors including GGV Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. The platform has processed millions of hours of audio content and serves customers ranging from individual users to large enterprises.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Otter.ai
All products by Otter.ai reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores Otter.ai
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Otter.ai's product on their own terms. They disagreed by 4.0 points — The Skeptic was the hardest to convince, The Decision Maker the most positive.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Otter.ai competes with, and how they differ.
Fireflies.ai pushes further into CRM and sales-workflow automation (AskFred analytics, native Salesforce/HubSpot sync) than Otter's broader consumer-to-enterprise note-taking focus, while both share a similar free-to-paid funnel and Zoom/Meet/Teams bot integrations.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Fathom is free-forever for individual users and small sales teams, monetizing mainly through a paid Team tier, while Otter charges from its entry paid plan and runs a larger, longer-established business that crossed $100M ARR in March 2025.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Granola records desktop audio without a bot joining the call and structures notes around the user's own typed shorthand, appealing to founders and VCs who dislike bot-in-meeting UX, trading Otter's searchable-transcript depth and AI meeting agents for a lighter workflow.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
tl;dv focuses on customer-facing sales and CS teams with call-clip sharing and coaching playlists at a lower per-seat price than Otter's Business tier, competing on the revenue-team use case rather than Otter's broader consumer-to-enterprise meeting-notes market.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Read AI layers cross-meeting engagement and sentiment analytics (talk-time, sentiment scoring) on top of transcription, differentiating on meeting-effectiveness coaching where Otter's newer agents (Sales Agent, SDR Agent) focus on revenue-team automation instead.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedCompany Timeline
Key milestones in Otter.ai's history, with sources.
- Launch
Launched Live Assist real-time coaching agent
Otter.ai introduced Live Assist, an AI agent that joins sales and support calls live to surface tip cards, track objectives, and coach reps in real time.
otter.ai - Launch
Launched Next-Gen Enterprise Suite with public API and MCP server
Otter.ai released an enterprise suite adding a public API, an MCP server for AI-to-AI connectivity, agentic AI chat, and a desktop app, citing over $1 billion in cumulative customer ROI.
otter.ai - Milestone
Achieved HIPAA compliance
Otter.ai announced it achieved HIPAA compliance through independent assessment, extending its existing SOC 2 Type II certification to healthcare use cases.
otter.ai - Milestone
Surpassed $100M ARR, launched AI meeting agent suite
Otter.ai announced it crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue while launching its Meeting Agent, Sales Agent, and SDR Agent products, reporting over 25 million users and fewer than 200 employees.
otter.ai - Launch
Launched OtterPilot AI meeting assistant
Otter.ai launched OtterPilot, an AI meeting assistant that auto-joins calls to generate summaries, capture slides, and produce live notes; the company reported over 1 billion meetings transcribed to date.
techcrunch.com - Launch
Launched Live Notes for Zoom calls
Otter.ai introduced Live Notes, giving Zoom meeting participants access to an interactive, real-time shared transcript.
techcrunch.com - Funding
Raised $10M led by NTT Docomo's Docomo Ventures
Now operating as Otter.ai, the company raised a $10 million round led by Docomo Ventures with Fusion Fund, GGV, and others participating, bringing total funding to $23 million.
venturebeat.com - Launch
Launched Otter for Teams
The company launched Otter for Teams, a shared transcription and storage product built for enterprise collaboration.
zdnet.com - Launch
Launched Otter for Education
AISense launched Otter for Education, a lecture note-taking and transcription tool aimed at college students.
venturebeat.com - Launch
Debuted Otter speech transcription app at Mobile World Congress
The company demoed its first Otter real-time speech transcription and translation app at Mobile World Congress, releasing it free on Android and iOS.
zdnet.com - Partnership
Partnered with Zoom for post-meeting transcription
AISense (later Otter.ai) announced a partnership with Zoom Video Communications to automatically transcribe video meetings after they ended.
zdnet.com - Founded
Founded as AISense Inc. by Sam Liang and Yun Fu
Sam Liang and Yun Fu, both AI-focused computer science engineers, founded the company as AISense in Mountain View, California; it later rebranded to Otter.ai.
idgconnect.com
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