Otter.ai

Otter.ai

Real-time AI transcription and meeting summaries

Overview

Otter.ai offers real-time AI transcription and meeting automation. Its core product Otter transcribes live audio, identifies speakers, and creates summaries; OtterPilot adds recording, slide capture, action-item extraction, and AI-driven summaries. It integrates with Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet and uses subscription pricing for individuals, teams, and enterprises. The goal is to help people capture, organize, and act on spoken information to save time and boost productivity in meetings and lectures.

About Otter.ai

Simplify's Rating
Why Otter.ai is rated
C+
Rated B on Competitive Edge
Rated B on Growth Potential
Rated D+ on Differentiation

Industries

Data & Analytics

Enterprise Software

AI & Machine Learning

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Series B

Total Funding

$73M

Headquarters

Los Altos, California

Founded

2016

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Otter says 35 million professionals and 1 billion meetings give unmatched data scale.
  • July 2026 Live Assist ships across Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft, and desktop.
  • July 2026 channel expansion targets US, UK, and Europe enterprise buyers.

What critics are saying

  • August 2026 California court let BIPA, CIPA, and ECPA claims proceed against Otter.
  • Plaintiffs allege Otter stores voiceprints and trains models without attendee consent.
  • A large damages award or injunction cripples Otter's bot, its only durable wedge.

What makes Otter.ai unique

  • July 2026 Live Assist turns Otter from transcription into real-time sales coaching.
  • Otter's Agent Builder grounds workflows in playbooks, past meetings, and Salesforce.
  • July 2026 hires Mike Barnes and Alex Gay sharpen enterprise go-to-market.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Funding

Total Funding

$73M

Above

Industry Average

Funded Over

5 Rounds

Series B funding is typically for startups that have proven their business model and need more funding to expand rapidly—often by entering new markets or adding more products. Investors are usually venture capital firms that specialize in later-stage investments.
Series B Funding Comparison
Above Average

Industry standards

$35M
$40M
Otter.ai
$45M
Linktree
$65M
Substack
$100M
ClickUp

Benefits

Competitive salary

Comprehensive stock and equity package

Hybrid Work Options

Company Gatherings

Comprehensive health care package (medical, dental, vision, life, disability)

PTO

401(k) retirement savings program

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-1%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

7%
The National Law Review
Aug 31st, 2026
When AI Takes Notes: Court Allows Privacy Claims Against Otter.ai to Proceed

312-499-6335 415.774.2973 When AI takes notes: court allows privacy claims against Otter.ai to proceed. Monday, August 31, 2026 Otter.ai's AI notetaker tool has been accused of violating Illinois's biometric privacy law, and the California court hearing the case recently let the proceedings move forward. As we have previously written in our sister blog, AI notetaker tools carry a growing range of legal risks. These include exposure under wiretapping and biometric privacy laws. According to the plaintiffs, Otter's AI-powered notetaker joins virtual meetings and records and transcribes participants' speech in real time. They also allege that Otter keeps the meeting data and uses it to train its AI models without getting consent from non- subscribers. This, they allege, violates Illinois' biometric law (BIPA) as well as eavesdropping laws. Namely, the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and California's Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA). The court allowed all of these claims to proceed. While the ruling addresses only the pleading stage and does not establish that Otter actually violated any of these laws there are several things worth keeping in mind. Regarding California's wiretapping law (CIPA), Otter argued that its bot was an authorized meeting participant and therefore a party to the conversation. The court disagreed because Otter uses the notetaker for its own commercial purpose: training AI. This was unlike a prior case, Graham v. Noom, Inc., in which the company's recording tool acted as an extension of the customer who deployed it. The court did set limits. It dismissed privacy claims where plaintiffs simply called their conversations "private" without alleging specific facts showing they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. But it allowed claims to proceed when the conversations involved sensitive topics, such as medical discussions. On the BIPA claims, the court found that Otter's speaker-tagging features plausibly involve capturing voiceprints. I.e., biometric identifiers under Illinois law. This allows plaintiffs' allegation that Otter violated the law by building speaker profiles without giving notice or getting consent. It also allows the allegation that the company should have had -and published- a written retention policy to proceed. The court rejected Otter's extraterritoriality defense, noting the plaintiffs were Illinois residents physically in Illinois when their data was collected. With BIPA carrying liquidated damages of $1,000 per negligent violation and $5,000 per intentional one, these claims add meaningful exposure. Putting It Into Practice: This ruling is a reminder of the importance of understanding the extent to which notetaker tools might use information for their own purposes. As always, practical steps include conversations with vendors, not just building terms into contracts (although those matter too). And understanding with the business the true value of using a notetaker, and balancing it against the risks. Current public notices. Published: 27 August, 2026 Published: 26 August, 2026 Published: 24 August, 2026 Published: 20 August, 2026 Published: 17 August, 2026 Published: 12 August, 2026 Published: 10 August, 2026 Published: 4 August, 2026 Published: 31 July, 2026 Published: 27 July, 2026 Published: 1 July, 2026

ID Tech Wire
Aug 20th, 2026
ID Tech digest - august 20, 2026.

ID Tech digest - august 20, 2026. August 20, 2026 Welcome to ID Tech's digest of identity industry news. Here's what you need to know about the world of digital identity and biometrics today: eSafety secures Roblox undertaking with first third party age assurance audit. Australia's eSafety Commissioner has secured a court-enforceable undertaking from Roblox requiring the gaming platform to submit its age-estimation measures and child-safety systems to an independent third-party auditor. Marking the first time independent auditing has been mandated under the country's Online Safety Act, the regulatory action follows agency testing that uncovered critical gaps, including adult accounts contacting Australian minors without parental consent and public visibility of children's profiles. While maintaining it meets regulatory obligations, Roblox has agreed to default under-16 accounts to private, restrict unapproved adult contact, and implement third-party compliance evaluations within three months to audit platform age assurance and enforce youth safety controls. Otter ai must face voiceprint claims under Illinois Biometric law. A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ruled that Otter.ai must face class-action claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), federal wiretap statutes, and the California Invasion of Privacy Act. Judge Eumi K. Lee determined that plaintiffs plausibly alleged the AI transcription service captured identifying voiceprints during virtual meetings on Zoom and Microsoft Teams by tagging speakers in real time to build persistent identification profiles. Finding that meeting participants in Illinois sufficiently established regional claims regardless of processing server locations, the court allowed the privacy litigation to proceed to determine liability for automated voiceprint collection during virtual meetings. DHS offers licenses for two patented biometric screening systems. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is seeking commercial licensing partners for two patented biometric systems developed in-house by researchers at the Science and Technology Directorate and the Transportation Security Administration. Credited to agency inventors Daniel Boyd and Arun Vemury, the Biometric Identity Disambiguation system resolves traveler screening bottlenecks caused by shared names, identical birthdates, and typographical input errors. The second technology, the Biometric Data Collection and Verification System, generates a standardized metric to evaluate biometric capture stations across effectiveness, efficiency, user satisfaction, and demographic equitability, enabling commercial implementers to license federal biometric screening and performance verification systems. Scottish police inspectorate urges facial recognition to enforce football banning orders. HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland Craig Naylor has recommended the adoption of facial recognition technology to prevent barred individuals from attending football matches, setting out the guidance in the HMICS Annual Report 2025-26. Following an independent review into significant disorder and safety failures during the March Scottish Cup quarter-final at Ibrox, the inspectorate urged sports governing bodies to deploy facial recognition alongside stricter crowd limits and rigorous banning orders, warning that ministers should mandate the technology if voluntary adoption stalls. The proposal encourages law enforcement to safely integrate advanced computer vision systems to enforce football stadium banning orders using facial recognition. Checkr acquires Truv to add income and employment verification. Background screening provider Checkr has acquired Truv, an income, asset, and employment verification platform that connects directly to payroll systems and financial institutions on a consumer-permissioned basis. Reaching 96 percent of the U.S. workforce, Truv's source-level data verification eliminates reliance on applicant-uploaded pay stubs, directly targeting income fraud across mortgage underwriting and state social services administering Medicaid and SNAP benefits. Following its previous purchase of Truework, the acquisition expands Checkr's footprint across a $45 billion verification market to automate consumer permissioned payroll and employment verification. Face search service ClarityCheck left more than 9 million images exposed. Cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler discovered an unprotected and unencrypted database belonging to people-search platform ClarityCheck that exposed approximately 9,042,977 image files totaling 450.2 GB on the open internet. Stored in unsecured cloud folders accessible via paths embedded in the service's website code, the repository contained facial images of adults, teenagers, and children sourced from social media, dating apps, and user uploads, alongside misconfigured APIs that leaked personal contact information. While ClarityCheck disputed the extent of public exposure and secured the data following notification, the incident underscores privacy and security risks surrounding unsecured face search databases and exposed biometric assets. Apple Wallet IDs set to reach four more US states. Code findings reported in Apple's mobile ecosystem indicate that driver's licenses and state IDs in Apple Wallet are preparing to launch in Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia, joining North Carolina's confirmed rollout to expand the digital identity feature to 18 states and Puerto Rico. North Carolina's Division of Motor Vehicles confirmed its state mobile wallet will debut in December, with integration into Apple, Google, and Samsung wallets scheduled for early 2027. Stored securely on user devices and presented by tapping an iPhone or Apple Watch against an identity reader authorized through Face ID or Touch ID, the mobile credentials allow residents to present verifiable digital driver licenses at TSA checkpoints. South africa launches biometric Electronic Travel Authorisation. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber have launched an online Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system at OR Tambo International Airport, transitioning national border management toward automated biometric processing. Combining live facial capture, machine learning, and the upgraded eMCS 2.0 movement control platform, the digital application allows visitors arriving at major international airports to replace traditional paper visas with instant online clearances linked directly to their passports. Following an earlier G20 pilot, the system pre-screens international travelers before arrival to modernize border management with biometric electronic travel authorizations. New York City biometric scanning ban wins Council majority. A New York City Council legislative proposal, Introduction 213, has secured a 28-member majority and the official backing of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration to ban commercial establishments open to the public from using biometric surveillance. Sponsored by Council Member Shahana Hanif, the bill prohibits sports arenas, concert halls, and retail stores from capturing facial, iris, voiceprint, or gait biometrics to identify or track customers, while establishing private rights of action with statutory damages up to $5,000 for violations. Supported by city consumer protection officials following controversial facial recognition deployments at venues like Madison Square Garden, the legislation aims to prohibit commercial biometric scanning in public venues and retail stores. FaceTec reaches 50 issued patents with USPTO grant on autonomous authentication nodes. Biometric technology firm FaceTec has expanded its intellectual property portfolio to 50 issued patents following the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's grant of U.S. Patent 12,699,756 for autonomous authentication node servers. Invented by CEO Kevin Alan Tussy, the patented architecture permanently blocks external administrative or IT staff access once an authentication node is activated, preventing insider credential tampering and unauthorized account validation. The grant adds to the company's patented 3D liveness detection portfolio - which recently withstood inter partes review challenges brought by Jumio before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board - to secure autonomous biometric authentication nodes against administrative manipulation. By the ID Tech Editorial Team

AndroGuider
Aug 19th, 2026
Calendly joins the AI meeting notetaker wars and unveils Callie scheduling assistant.

Calendly joins the AI meeting notetaker wars and unveils Callie scheduling assistant. Tl;dr. * Calendly has launched its own AI meeting notetaker to compete with Otter.ai, Fireflies, and Zoom AI Companion, offering automated transcription, summaries, and action items directly inside the Calendly platform. * Alongside it, the company unveiled Callie, a new AI-powered scheduling assistant that can handle booking via chat and email, negotiate times, and manage rescheduling and follow-ups autonomously. * The dual launch signals Calendly's shift from a simple scheduling link tool to a full AI-powered productivity and meeting lifecycle platform. A crowded field gets even more crowded. Calendly is officially entering the AI meeting notetaker wars. Long known as the go-to tool for eliminating the back-and-forth of scheduling, the company is now expanding far beyond the calendar invite itself. Its new AI notetaker will automatically join scheduled meetings, transcribe conversations in real time, and generate shareable summaries - a direct challenge to established players like Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom, Granola, and the built-in AI companions from Zoom, Google, and Microsoft. Unlike standalone notetakers that require a separate bot to be invited to calls, Calendly's advantage is its position at the point of scheduling. Because the meeting is already booked through Calendly, the notetaker can be enabled by default at the time of booking, with no extra steps for the host or guest. Recordings, transcripts, and AI-generated notes are then automatically attached to the Calendly event, centralized in one place alongside the invite, calendar details, and any pre-meeting information collected via routing forms. The feature includes speaker identification, searchable transcripts, auto-generated chapters and highlights, and perhaps most importantly for enterprise users, actionable next steps. The AI will pull out action items, owners, and deadlines, and can push them directly to connected tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and Notion. Calendly is also emphasizing privacy and control, giving hosts the ability to set notetaker preferences at the event-type level and allowing guests to see clear disclosure that a meeting is being recorded and transcribed. Why Calendly thinks it can win. At first glance, launching a notetaker in 2026 seems late. The market is saturated, and many users already have a default tool provided by their video conferencing platform. Calendly is betting that its distribution and workflow integration will be its differentiator. The company already powers scheduling for millions of users and tens of thousands of companies. By embedding note-taking into the existing scheduling workflow rather than treating it as an add-on, Calendly removes adoption friction. There's no new bot to approve, no separate dashboard to check. For teams using Calendly's Routing and Round-Robin features, the notetaker can also provide analytics across meetings - tracking talk time, common objections, and follow-up completion rates - turning every scheduled call into a source of revenue intelligence. This is also a defensive move. As competitors like Microsoft Copilot and Zoom AI Companion bundle note-taking for free, standalone scheduling could become commoditized. Owning the post-meeting record keeps Calendly essential after the meeting is booked. Meet Callie: Calendly's AI scheduling assistant. The second half of the announcement is Callie, Calendly's new AI-powered scheduling assistant. While Calendly's classic scheduling links require the recipient to pick a time, Callie is designed to handle the messy, human side of scheduling that links can't solve. Callie works across email and chat and can be CC'd or @-mentioned to take over coordination. Users can forward an email thread or loop Callie into a conversation, and the assistant will understand context, propose times based on real calendar availability and scheduling preferences, negotiate with multiple guests, handle time zone conversions, and send the final invite. It can also manage rescheduling, cancellations, and pre-meeting reminders and follow-ups without human intervention. Powered by large language models and connected directly to the user's calendar, Callie understands natural language instructions like "find 30 minutes next week after 2pm ET, but only if my co-founder is free" or "prioritize in-person slots for this candidate." For sales and recruiting teams, Callie can enforce routing rules, qualify leads before booking, and personalize outreach at scale. Calendly is positioning Callie as a direct competitor to AI assistants like Clockwise, Reclaim.ai, and early pioneers like x.ai's Amy and Andrew, but with the benefit of Calendly's decade of scheduling data and enterprise-grade calendar infrastructure. From scheduling link to meeting lifecycle platform. Together, the notetaker and Callie represent a major strategic shift for Calendly. The company is no longer just solving *when* people meet, but *what happens* before, during, and after the meeting. The vision is a fully automated meeting lifecycle: Callie handles the outreach and negotiation to get the meeting booked, the notetaker captures and summarizes what was actually said, and Calendly's AI then automates the follow-up - drafting thank-you emails, updating CRM records, and even scheduling the next step. For customers, this closes the loop between scheduling, conversation intelligence, and revenue operations. This pivot mirrors a broader trend in productivity software, where single-purpose tools are racing to become all-in-one AI work platforms. Notion, Slack, and Zoom are all adding scheduling; Calendly is adding intelligence and automation. The next battleground will be which platform can most seamlessly connect the entire workflow without feeling bloated or intrusive. Availability and what's next. Both the AI meeting notetaker and Callie are rolling out now for Calendly users, with advanced features like CRM auto-updates, custom AI summary templates, and team-level analytics reserved for Standard, Teams, and Enterprise plans. The company has indicated that more proactive AI features are on the roadmap, including the ability for Callie to suggest who you should meet with and for the notetaker to provide real-time coaching prompts during calls. Whether users will consolidate around Calendly for both scheduling and intelligence or stick with their existing patchwork of tools remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the simple scheduling link is no longer enough. In the era of AI productivity tools, Calendly is determined not to just schedule the meeting - but to own it entirely. AndroGuider Team Articles written by the AndroGuider team. Androguider try to make them thorough and informational while being easy to read.

Marzano Human Resource Consulting
Aug 18th, 2026
The silent guest in your meetings: AI note-takers, NJ law, and your handbook.

The silent guest in your meetings: AI note-takers, NJ law, and your handbook. Workplace AI note-takers have quietly become the most popular new coworker in the American workplace. Tools like Otter.ai, Zoom AI Companion, and Microsoft Teams transcription now join meetings automatically, capture every word, and spit out tidy summaries. The convenience is real. So is the legal exposure most employers haven't thought through. The New Jersey picture. New Jersey is a "one-party consent" state. Under the New Jersey Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, a conversation can lawfully be recorded as long as one participant consents - and a person recording their own meeting counts. That makes NJ friendlier to AI transcription than many states. But one-party consent is a false comfort. If an AI bot joins a call that no participant actually authorized, or captures people who never knew they were being recorded, the "one party" cushion gets thin fast. And the ground is shifting: bills introduced in Trenton (A6186 / S4739) would flip New Jersey to an all-party consent standard, with violations treated as a third-degree crime. Employers who build their habits around the current rule could wake up on the wrong side of a new one. The national picture. Cross a state line and the rules change. California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania all require consent from everyone on the call. For any company with remote employees, clients, or vendors in those states, one-party thinking is a trap. The lawsuits are already here. Otter.ai faces consolidated privacy litigation alleging it recorded conversations without everyone's consent and used them to train its models. A 2026 class action targets Microsoft Teams transcription over biometric voice data under Illinois law. Beyond consent, courts are wrestling with whether feeding privileged discussions to a third-party AI vendor waives attorney-client privilege - and every transcript becomes a permanent record that the other side can demand in discovery. The risks of workplace AI note-takers. * Illegal recording across state lines or under a future NJ standard. * Privilege waiver when legal or strategic talks are transcribed by an outside vendor. * Discoverable evidence - an inaccurate or off-the-cuff summary used against you in litigation. * Data breaches exposing confidential or personnel information stored in the cloud. * Sensitive-meeting exposure in HR investigations, terminations, and negotiations. Put it in the handbook. None of this means banning the tools. It means governing them. Your employee handbook should spell out when AI note-takers are permitted and prohibited, require clear consent and visible notice, carve out sensitive meetings (HR, legal, negotiations), and set rules for vendor vetting, retention, and deletion. The bot in the corner is taking notes whether or not you have a policy. Better to write the rules before a court writes them for you. Marzano HR Consulting helps New Jersey employers put practical policies in place - from employee handbooks to AI in the workplace. Get in touch to review yours.

SalesTech Star
Aug 12th, 2026
Otter.ai names Alex Gay Chief Marketing Officer as company expands beyond the AI notetaking category.

Otter.ai names Alex Gay Chief Marketing Officer as company expands beyond the AI notetaking category. Otter.ai, the company behind the leading AI notetaker, announced the appointment of Alex Gay as Chief Marketing Officer to lead global marketing strategy across brand, product marketing, demand generation, and communications. Gay joins Otter at a pivotal moment of growth, as the company scales its enterprise presence and expands AI's role in how organizations capture, connect, and activate knowledge from conversations. He will sharpen Otter's brand and go-to-market narrative as it evolves from meeting transcription into a full conversational knowledge engine for the enterprise. With over 40 million professionals now using Otter, the company sits at the center of a rapidly expanding market as enterprises look to capture and harness the knowledge generated through meetings and conversations. With over two decades of marketing leadership experience across high-growth technology companies, Gay most recently served as Vice President of Product and Corporate Marketing at Superhuman (formerly Grammarly), where he led marketing strategy focused on product storytelling, customer-centric growth, and go-to-market execution during the company's rebrand and expansion into agentic AI products. Prior to Superhuman, Gay spent several years at Adobe in senior product marketing roles. He holds an MBA in Competitive Strategy and Marketing Strategy from Edinburgh Business School. "I'm thrilled to join Otter at such a transformational moment for the company and for the category," said Alex Gay. "Voice is one of the richest, most underutilized sources of knowledge inside every organization. As AI accelerates the pace of business, unlocking that voice data gives teams access to the most up-to-date decisions, plans, and insights. I'm looking forward to building a brand and marketing organization that matches the ambition of the product." "We're delighted to welcome Alex to Otter at such an exciting time for the company," said Sam Liang, co-founder and CEO of Otter.ai. "Alex brings a rare combination of brand craft and product marketing rigour from his time at Superhuman/Grammarly and Adobe. As we scale Otter into the enterprise, Alex will help us tell that story clearly and build a marketing engine to match our growth."

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