Otter.ai announced on Tuesday that it has raised $320 million from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund (CVF), which provides capital to startups without diluting equity and receives returns based on the results of marketing spend. The startup said the funds will go toward enterprise growth, go-to-market strategy, international expansion and product innovation.
The company, which has been operating for nearly a decade, had raised $50 million in total funding prior to this round, with its last raise in 2021, according to PitchBook data. Otter said it is approaching new revenue milestones but did not provide updated figures. It also did not disclose monthly active users or churn rates.
"Voice is one of the biggest untapped opportunities in enterprise AI, and Otter is at the forefront of it, a conviction that's only deepened watching Otter's growth," said Pranav Singhvi, Partner and Co-founder of CVF at General Catalyst. "When Otter enables enterprises to capture critical voice data and turns it into actionable business insights, teams move faster, decisions get sharper, and productivity compounds across the organization."
Otter faces heavy competition from well-funded meeting note-takers including Fireflies.ai, Granola and Read AI, as well as newer entrants such as Calendly, Wispr and Superhuman, which acquired Fathom. The company has recently introduced a meeting assistant, a cross-app search function and integrations with other AI tools.
Newly appointed CMO Alex Gay, who joined from Superhuman, said the company sees a major opportunity in turning transcripts into an actionable roadmap for people with back-to-back meetings. "Meetings are terribly inefficient because when you come into a meeting, you spend the first twenty minutes recapping what was said before to catch everybody up," he said.
Otter is experimenting with features that provide insights before, during and after meetings, including a pre-brief that supplies context from previous conversations and a Live Assist option that lets users ask the AI assistant questions in real time.