Plaud
Headquarters
San Francisco, CAFounded
2021CEO / Founder
Nathan HsuEmployees
51-200Funding
Seed — $26MProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.2/10Website
plaud.ai/
Profile updated
About Plaud
Plaud develops AI-powered voice recording devices and software for transcribing and summarizing conversations, meetings, and calls. The company was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with hardware engineering in Shenzhen and a registered sales entity in Hong Kong.
Its main product, the Plaud Note, is a credit-card-sized recorder that attaches to a smartphone and captures in-person conversations and phone calls, syncing audio to a companion app that generates transcripts, summaries, and searchable notes using AI models. The company later introduced the Plaud NotePin, a wearable pendant-style recorder. Plaud markets its products to professionals, students, and consumers seeking to convert spoken conversations into organized text records.
Plaud has raised venture funding across multiple rounds from investors including HongShan (formerly Sequoia Capital China) and other backers, and has reported selling devices to millions of users globally. The company has scaled its team to support hardware manufacturing, app development, and customer support as demand for its recorders has grown.
Specialties
Financials
Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.
Products by Plaud
All products by Plaud reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores Plaud
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Plaud's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.8 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who Plaud competes with, and how they differ.
Otter.ai is a pure-software meeting transcriber that joins Zoom/Meet/Teams calls directly; Plaud instead sells dedicated hardware (Note, NotePin, One) that also captures in-person conversations and phone calls a bot cannot reach.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Granola is a Mac-only meeting-notes app with no hardware component, sold as a pure SaaS subscription; TechCrunch named it a direct target of Plaud's January 2026 desktop app launch.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Fathom bundles free AI meeting notes into video-call platforms with no device to buy; Plaud monetizes primarily through hardware sales plus an upsell subscription that nearly half of device owners convert to.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Fireflies.ai integrates into calendar and conferencing tools for team-wide call search and collaboration rather than portable recording hardware; TechCrunch listed it alongside Granola and Fathom as a rival to Plaud's desktop notetaker.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedBee (acquired by Amazon, July 2025) sells a $49.99 always-listening wristband roughly a third of Plaud's device price, targeting ambient day-to-day capture rather than Plaud's meeting- and phone-call-focused recording.
Company Timeline
Key milestones in Plaud's history, with sources.
- Launch
Plaud One AI earphones with eSIM-enabled case launch
Plaud unveils the Plaud One, noise-cancelling earbuds whose case can record in-person meetings and carries its own eSIM so the AI agent works without a paired phone; preorders open at $249 for Q4 2026 shipping.
techcrunch.com - Milestone
Software subscription business tops $100M in ARR after 2M+ devices shipped
Plaud says its software subscription arm passed $100M in annualized revenue run-rate, with nearly half of device owners upgrading to a paid plan; the same day, Bloomberg reports total company annual recurring revenue crossed $250M with a $500M 2026 sales target, achieved without venture funding.
techcrunch.com - Launch
NotePin S and Plaud Desktop app launch ahead of CES 2026
Plaud ships its fourth hardware SKU (NotePin S) alongside its first Mac desktop meeting-notetaker app, positioned against Granola, Fathom and Fireflies; the company says it has sold more than 1.5 million devices to date.
techcrunch.com - Launch
Plaud Note Pro launches at $179
Plaud ships the Note Pro with a 0.95-inch AMOLED display, four MEMS microphones and roughly double the audio pickup range of the original Note; preorders open the same day for October 2025 shipping.
techcrunch.com - Funding
Seed/convertible investment — approximately $5M from Carbide Ventures
Plaud closes its first disclosed institutional investment: Carbide Ventures partner Dan Weirich invests around $5M, with angel investor Patrick Kavanagh also participating; valuation undisclosed. Sacra separately reports a $4.75M convertible note closing 2025-04-24 with J12 Ventures also involved — a tracker detail not independently verified.
forbes.com.au - Launch
NotePin wearable AI notetaker launches
Plaud introduces the NotePin, a clip/pendant/wristband-wearable AI recorder using GPT-4o for transcription, extending the lineup beyond the original card-shaped Note.
techcrunch.com - Launch
Plaud Note launches on Kickstarter
Nathan Xu and Charles Liu launch the Plaud Note via Kickstarter, pivoting from their earlier Izyrec recorder; the campaign nets more than $1M in pre-orders within days.
the-gadgeteer.com
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