Senior Software Engineer - Backend, Data

Circleback adds free tier to its AI meeting notetaker. By admin - August 31, 2026 Circleback has launched a new free plan for its AI meeting notetaker, giving users unlimited meetings without a subscription for the first time. The free tier includes AI-generated notes, action items, transcripts, and tools for querying meeting records, although access to meeting history is limited to 30 days. What the free plan includes. Circleback's new Free plan covers both online and in-person meetings. Users can record meetings with Circleback's bot or its bot-free desktop app, while mobile and Apple Watch apps support in-person recording. The plan also includes speaker-labeled transcripts, automatic tagging and sharing, Ask Circleback, and integrations with Slack and Linear. Circleback says API, MCP, CLI, and automation access is available in a limited form on the free tier. The main limitation is 30-day history. The biggest restriction is not the number of meetings users can record. Circleback says free users can record unlimited meetings, but their meeting and recording history is limited to 30 days. Users who need older meetings will need to move to a paid plan. Circleback cuts the cost of entry. Before this change, Circleback did not have a permanent free tier, and its paid plans started at a higher price. TechCrunch reports that the new paid plans start at about $14 per month when billed annually, compared with the previous entry price of $20.83 per month. Circleback's current pricing page lists Pro at $15 per user per month. The new lineup includes Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans. What do the paid plans offer? The Pro plan adds unlimited meeting history, one year of recording storage, broader integrations including Notion, HubSpot and Salesforce, custom AI insights, and full API, MCP and CLI access. Business adds workspace administration, custom retention settings and usage reporting. Enterprise adds features such as single sign-on, invoice billing, unlimited recording storage, priority support and HIPAA compliance. Why is Circleback doing this? Circleback co-founder Ali Haghani told TechCrunch that the company saw a significant drop in users after its previous limited trial period ended. The company expects a permanent free plan to let more people keep using the product and potentially convert some of them into paid customers. The move also comes as the AI meeting-notetaker market becomes more crowded, with products such as Granola, Read AI, Fireflies, Wispr and Calendly competing for users. Circleback is using the free tier as a growth strategy. Haghani said Circleback does not spend on Google or Meta advertising and views the free tier as part of its marketing strategy. The company believes users can discover the product through regular use rather than through traditional advertising. Circleback also says it has remained profitable since raising $2.5 million in 2024. TechCrunch reports that the company has eight employees and more than $1 million in run-rate revenue per employee. Recent product updates. The free-tier launch follows several other updates from Circleback. On August 28, the company added a feature that lets users import meetings from other apps, including notes, transcripts, attendees and available recordings. Earlier in August, Circleback launched its API, allowing developers and AI agents to work with meeting notes, action items, transcripts, recordings, people and company information. What this means for users. The new free plan gives users a way to test Circleback over a longer period without being forced into a subscription. For people who mainly need recent meeting notes and action items, the 30-day history limit may be enough. Users who need long-term records or advanced integrations will still need a paid plan. The bigger change is strategic: Circleback is lowering the barrier to entry at a time when AI meeting tools are competing heavily for the same users.

Pocket raises $11M in bet on rising demand for AI note-taking devices. 6:16 AM PDT · June 29, 2026 Unlike AI gadgets like Rabbit or Humane, companies building dedicated gadgets for recording and transcribing meetings have actually seen some traction. The market is huge - though a bit constrained, as smartphones work fine for such tasks when paired with note-taking apps - and startups like Plaud, Mobvoi, Anker, Viaim, and Vibe have jumped in to take advantage. In this crowded market, Y Combinator-backed Pocket thinks it can win with its design, packaging, and pricing. The company sells a $129 credit card-shaped puck, which sticks to the back of your phone, and promises unlimited recordings, transcriptions, and to-do items, no subscription required. The startup says it has sold more than 130,000 units since launching last year, and that momentum has now helped it score $11 million in funding from Accel, Y Combinator, and ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder Mati Staniszewski. Pocket's core idea isn't novel: You stick the puck to the back of your phone, turn on recording during a meeting, and it'll record and transcribe your conversations. Users can then ask the accompanying phone app to generate summaries of meetings, ask an AI assistant questions about meetings, create mind maps, and transform the text into different templates. While the basic transcription comes free with the puck, the company sells a $200-per-year plan to unlock unlimited AI summaries, queries to the AI assistant, daily highlights, and file attachments. "You can record on the go, offline, and in the field, which is exactly how lawyers, salespeople, doctors, real estate agents, construction workers, and students use Pocket today," Accel partner Cecilia Wang said. "Not only are people present rather than shifting focus to take notes, but more information and insights also get captured than ever before, which otherwise would have been lost. Over time, that accumulation of insights is really valuable: one central place where your ideas, conversations, and thoughts live, rather than scattered and lost," Wang said. Lightspeed is building its edge on followers, not just funds| Equity Podcast 0 seconds of 30 minutes, 16 seconds Volume 0% Pocket was founded by Akshay Narisetti, who was a founding member of rival note-taking startup Omi; and Gabriel Dymowski, who previously founded a blockchain-based document management startup. "We thought every meeting notetaker was built for online conversations, but nothing was geared towards real-life talk. AI really needs a lot of context to work better for us, and a lot of that context exists offline," Narisetti told TechCrunch. For its enterprise customers, Pocket offers custom workflow management, webhook support, and integration with apps such as Google Calendar, OneDrive, Google Drive, Obsidian, Claude, and Cursor. Plus, there is a model context protocol (MCP) server to connect its AI assistant to other databases. Like other meeting notetakers, Pocket wants to help people automate tasks like drafting emails, updating CRMs, and creating action items based on meetings. The company is banking on shipping software fast to enable these integrations. Devices like Pocket undoubtedly face competition from software players such as Granola, Zoom, Fireflies, Otter, and Read AI. However, device-first companies like Plaud, which is on track to generate annual revenue of $100 million via software sales, are also building enterprise capacity along with desktop apps for digital meetings. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn't affect our editorial independence. Ivan Mehta Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web. You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal. October 13 - 15 San Francisco Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you. Save up to $330 today!