Description
Otter.ai
What is Otter.ai?
Otter.ai is the leading AI transcription and meeting assistant platform. It provides real-time transcription, automated summaries, action items, and AI Chat to transform virtual and in-person meetings into accessible and actionable information.
Founded in 2016 as AISense by Sam Liang and Yun Fu, the company has grown to surpass $100M in ARR (March 2025) with over 25 million users and more than 1 billion meetings transcribed. In 2025, Otter evolved from a passive assistant to active AI agents that participate in meetings with voice.
Company and History
| Data | Information |
|---|---|
| Company | Otter.ai, Inc. |
| Original Name | AISense |
| Founded | February 2016 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, USA |
| Founders | Sam Liang (CEO), Yun Fu (CTO) |
| CEO | Sam Liang |
| CTO | Yun Fu |
| Total Funding | ~$70-73M |
| ARR (March 2025) | $100M+ |
| ARR (2024) | ~$81M |
| Users | 25+ million |
| Meetings Transcribed | 1+ billion |
| Minutes Transcribed | 50+ billion |
| Employees | <200 |
| Revenue/Employee | >$500K |
Founding Story:
Sam Liang holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, where he studied under David Cheriton (Google's first investor). Before Otter, Liang spent 4 years at Google Maps leading location services, and founded Alohar Mobile (acquired by Alibaba in 2013).
The inspiration for Otter came when Liang struggled to keep up with 30-40 weekly meetings. He created Otter to automatically capture and save meeting information.
Yun Fu, co-founder and CTO, was head of infrastructure at Alohar, where he met Liang.
Timeline:
- 2016: Founded as AISense, $3M seed from Draper Associates
- 2018: Partnership with Zoom for post-conference transcription
- 2018: App launch at Mobile World Congress
- 2018: Otter for Education for students
- 2019: Otter for Teams for enterprises
- 2020: $10M Series B led by NTT Docomo Ventures
- 2020: Live Notes for Zoom (COVID boom)
- 2021: 100M+ meetings, 3B+ minutes transcribed
- 2022: 400% growth, 12B minutes transcribed
- 2023: OtterPilot launch, 1B meetings
- 2024: French and Spanish support, ~$81M ARR
- 2025: $100M ARR, Meeting Agents launch
Funding:
| Round | Date | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Sep 2016 | $3M | Draper Associates, Draper Dragon, David Cheriton |
| Series A | - | - | Horizons Ventures, GGV Capital |
| Series B | Jan 2020 | $10M | NTT Docomo Ventures |
| Total | - | ~$70M | 27 investors |
Notable Investors:
- Spectrum Equity (growth equity)
- Horizons Ventures (Li Ka-shing, early Facebook, Spotify, Zoom)
- NTT Docomo Ventures
- Draper Associates (Tim Draper - early Tesla, Skype)
- David Cheriton (Google's first investor)
- GGV Capital
- Early investors in Google, DeepMind, Zoom, and Tesla
Products and Features
OtterPilot™
AI assistant that automates meetings:
- Auto-join Zoom, Teams, Google Meet
- Real-time transcription with 95% accuracy
- Speaker identification
- Slide capture
- Automatic summary generation
- Action items with deadlines
Configuration:
- Connect calendar (Google/Microsoft)
- Auto-join scheduled meetings
- Appears as "[Your Name]'s AI Notetaker (Otter.ai)"
- Auto-leave after 12 min of silence
Otter Meeting Agent (2025)
Evolution from passive assistant to active AI agent:
- Voice-activated: Participates with voice in meetings
- Answers questions based on entire meeting database
- Schedules follow-ups
- Drafts emails via voice interaction
- Company-wide meeting data access
Otter Sales Agent
Specialized agent for sales teams:
- Real-time guidance during calls
- Automatic sales insights extraction
- Identifies pain points, objections, next steps
- Auto-sync to Salesforce and HubSpot
- Follow-up email writing
Otter SDR Agent
Agent for lead generation:
- Autonomous product demos
- Shortens sales cycles
- Scales lead generation
Otter AI Chat
Conversational AI chat:
- Questions about any past meeting
- Search across all transcription history
- Generates follow-up emails
- Creates status updates
- Participates in channels and DMs
- 20 queries/month on free plan
Core Transcription
- 95% accuracy reported by users
- Real-time transcription
- Support for English, Spanish, and French
- Speaker identification
- Custom vocabulary (names, jargon, acronyms)
- Frequent keywords and topics
- Timestamps for navigation
- Export to TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT
Channels & Collaboration
- Channels for team communication
- Mix of live conversations with async updates
- Comments and highlights on transcriptions
- Share notes via email/Slack
- My Action Items: cross-meeting task tracking
Media Agent (Content)
For journalists and creators:
- Brainstorming session capture
- Key quote extraction
- Content drafting assistance
Integrations
Meeting Platforms
- Zoom (official partner since 2018)
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Meet
- Cisco Webex
Productivity
- Slack (auto note sharing)
- Dropbox (auto-sync files)
- Google Calendar
- Microsoft Outlook
- Zapier
CRM
- Salesforce (notes and insights sync)
- HubSpot (auto push)
HR
- Greenhouse (via Zapier)
Apps
- iOS (iPhone/iPad)
- Android
- Chrome Extension (no-bot mode for Google Meet)
- Web App
- Desktop App
Pricing and Plans (2025)
Free Plan (Basic)
| Feature | Limit |
|---|---|
| Price | $0 |
| Minutes/month | 300 |
| Per conversation | 30 min max |
| File imports | 3 lifetime |
| AI Chat queries | 20/month |
| Workspace members | 5 |
| History | 25 recent conversations |
| Unlimited meetings | ✓ |
| AI summaries | ✓ |
| Action items | ✓ |
Pro Plan
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Monthly price | $16.99/mo |
| Annual price | $8.33-10/seat/mo ($100-120/year) |
| Minutes/month | 1,200 |
| Per conversation | 90 min max |
| File imports | 10/month |
| Custom vocabulary | ✓ |
| Priority support | ✓ |
Student discount: 20% off ($6.67/mo annual)
Business Plan
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Monthly price | $30/seat/mo |
| Annual price | $20/seat/mo ($240/year) |
| Minutes/month | 6,000 |
| Per conversation | 4 hours max |
| File imports | Unlimited |
| Workspace members | 25 |
| Concurrent meetings | 3 |
| Usage analytics | ✓ |
| Priority support | ✓ |
| Dropbox sync | ✓ |
Enterprise Plan
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Price | Custom |
| Minutes/month | 6,000+ |
| OtterPilot for Sales | ✓ |
| Video Replay | ✓ (Zoom, Meet, Teams) |
| SSO (SAML) | ✓ (min 100 users) |
| HIPAA compliance | ✓ |
| Domain capture | ✓ |
| Dedicated CSM | ✓ |
| Custom notetaker name | ✓ |
| MCP server integration | ✓ |
Estimated Enterprise pricing (Vendr): $17,000-31,000/year
Security
- TLS encryption
- AES-256 encryption (real-time content)
- SOC 2
- GDPR
- EU AI Act compliance
- HIPAA (Enterprise, since 2025)
- 2FA (Authenticator app, SMS)
Business Metrics
Financial
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| ARR (Mar 2025) | $100M+ |
| ARR (2024) | ~$81M |
| YoY Growth | ~56% |
| Revenue/employee | >$500K |
| Employees | <200 |
| Annual Customer ROI | $1B+ |
Users and Usage
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total users | 25M+ |
| Meetings transcribed | 1B+ |
| Minutes transcribed | 50B+ |
| Words/minute | 1M+ (processing) |
| Countries | 230+ |
| Free→Paid conversion | ~3% |
Productivity
- 62% of users save 4+ hours/week
- 12% save 10+ hours/week
- 97% save at least 1 hour/week
- Equals 1 month of work/year saved
Research Findings (2024)
- 71% of professionals use AI at work
- 96% of managers know employees use AI
- 75% of managers recommend AI
- 86% believe their work will change due to AI
Use Cases
By Industry
- Sales: Call coaching, CRM sync, follow-ups
- Marketing: Research, competitive intel
- HR: Interviews, onboarding
- Education: Class notes, accessibility
- Journalism: Interview transcription
- Research: Focus groups, interviews
- Legal: Depositions, meetings
By Role
- Sales Reps: Coaching and automatic follow-ups
- Product Managers: Discovery notes
- Recruiters: Interviews and evaluation
- Students: Class notes
- Journalists: Accurate transcription
By Function
- Virtual meeting transcription
- In-person transcription (mobile)
- Audio/video file import
- YouTube transcription
- Podcasts and webinars
- Online courses (Coursera, etc.)
Technology
Speech Recognition
- Proprietary AI model developed in-house
- Deep learning with millions of hours of audio
- Word Error Rate (WER): ~6.7% (better than competition)
- Better than OpenAI Whisper in accuracy
- Optimized for noisy environments and difficult accents
"Ambient Voice Intelligence™"
Proprietary technologies:
- Speech recognition
- Speaker separation
- Speaker ID
- Keyword/topic extraction
Competition
| Competitor | Otter Differentiator |
|---|---|
| Fireflies.ai | Otter more users (25M vs 16M), higher accuracy |
| Zoom AI Companion | Otter cross-platform, more features |
| Microsoft Copilot | Otter specialized in meetings |
| Gong | Otter more accessible, not just sales |
| Grain | Otter more users, more integrations |
| Fathom | Otter more enterprise features |
| Granola | Otter cloud-based with more features |
Market
- Market size (audio transcription): $31.82B projected for 2025
- Otter is #1 in AI Meeting Assistants by users
Recognition
- Official Zoom partner (since 2018)
- G2 Leader in Meeting Assistants
- TechRadar Best Speech-to-Text App (2024)
- Android Police Top AI Note-Taking Tool
Controversies and Privacy
Concerns
- 2018: ZDNet reported privacy policy issues
- 2022: Politico highlighted privacy practice concerns
- 2025: Class-action lawsuit in California alleging recording without consent
- University of Massachusetts banned Otter for violating two-party consent
Otter's Response
- Only CTO can access transcriptions under "legitimate user request"
- HIPAA compliance for healthcare
- Data not used to train AI (per policy)
- Audio deletion options
Target Audience
Ideal Users
- Professionals with many meetings
- Sales teams needing coaching
- Students for class notes
- Journalists for interviews
- Researchers for focus groups
- Companies wanting knowledge base
By Size
- Individuals and freelancers
- Small teams (5-25 people)
- Mid-market companies
- Fortune 500 enterprises
Roadmap and Future
Vision
Sam Liang sees a future where each person has their own chatbot that contributes insights based on past interactions.
In Development
- Slack, email, and other source integration
- More languages (expansion planned 2025)
- Agents participating in live meetings
- Enterprise knowledge base
Key Features
Real-time transcription with 95% accuracy
OtterPilot™ auto-joins Zoom, Teams and Google Meet
Otter Meeting Agent with active voice in meetings (2025)
Otter Sales Agent for real-time sales coaching
Otter SDR Agent for autonomous product demos
AI Chat for questions about any past meeting
Automatic meeting summaries
Action items with assigned deadlines
Automatic speaker identification
Slide capture during presentations
Custom vocabulary for names and jargon
Support for English, Spanish and French
Channels for async team collaboration
Export to TXT, DOCX, PDF and SRT (subtitles)
Auto-sync with Salesforce and HubSpot
Integration with Slack and Dropbox
Apps for iOS, Android, Chrome and desktop
HIPAA compliance for healthcare
Search across complete meeting history
Video replay for Zoom, Meet and Teams
Use Cases
Virtual meeting transcription on Zoom/Teams/Meet
Automatic notes for sales teams
Real-time sales call coaching
Sales insights sync to CRM (Salesforce/HubSpot)
Journalistic interview transcription
Class notes for university students
Focus groups and market research
HR onboarding and interviews
Product discovery meetings
Podcast and webinar transcription
Online courses and distance education
Depositions and legal documentation
Automatic post-meeting follow-ups
Enterprise meeting knowledge base
Accessibility for hearing impaired
YouTube video transcription
Brainstorming sessions captured
Development standups and meetings
Autonomous product demos (SDR Agent)
Competitive conversation analysis
Categories
Information
Company
Otter.ai, Inc.
Website
otter.aiUser Reviews
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