Otter.ai was founded in 2016 in Mountain View, California, by Sam Liang and Yun Fu. Liang previously worked at Google and Nuance, and he brought deep speech recognition expertise to the company. The product started as a transcription tool and has evolved into a full meeting assistant.
Otter joins your Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls and generates a live transcript as the meeting happens. After the call, it produces a summary with key takeaways, action items, and the ability to search through the full conversation. Users can highlight important moments, add comments, and share specific clips.
The platform introduced OtterPilot, which handles meeting notes automatically — it can even join meetings on your behalf when you can’t attend. For sales teams, Otter integrates with Salesforce and HubSpot to sync meeting insights directly into CRM records.
Otter.ai serves over 25 million users and has partnerships with Zoom (it was Zoom’s first third-party transcription integration). The free tier includes 300 monthly transcription minutes, which has driven massive adoption among students and professionals.
The company raised over $63 million in funding, including a Series D in 2024. In a crowded meeting AI space, Otter’s early mover advantage and solid speech recognition accuracy have kept it competitive against newer entrants.
