Madrona Venture Group is a Seattle-based venture capital firm. The firm prefers to invest in businesses that are involved in information technology, e-commerce, digital media, advertising, software, gaming, data, analytics, mobile, and infrastructure.

Madrona

PSL Ventures is a venture fund that focuses on technology-driven companies. The firm is closely affiliated with Pioneer Square Labs' startup studio, investing in both studio and non-studio companies.

PSL Ventures

Goodwater empowers exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for the better. They believe consumer technology is a force on earth, shaping culture and transforming the global economy at unprecedented speed and scale. They invest in promising entrepreneurs to solve pressing problems. As a combined force, Goodwater companies are a global force for change, poised to measurably improve billions of lives.

Goodwater Capital

Smash Capital is a Emerging growth and later stage consumer internet and software VC firm.

Smash Capital

Read AI

Read AI helps enhance meeting wellness by providing better scheduling options, real-time analytics, and detailed meeting summaries to keep everyone on the same page. The tool offers AI-generated summaries, known as “Readouts”, for email and messaging platforms like Gmail, Outlook, Teams, and Slack, streamlining communication. Read AI is capable of summarizing video calls across various platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, making it versatile for different meeting types.

Read.ai is an AI platform designed to enhance virtual meeting experiences by automatically joining scheduled meetings, taking detailed notes, and providing comprehensive recaps. Its core offering revolves around real-time transcription, sentiment analysis, and identification of action items to boost productivity. Read.ai integrates with popular video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.

The tools that power remote work are define the next generation of enterprise software.

Remote Work Tools

Read AI is a productivity-focused artificial intelligence company founded in 2021 by David Shim, Rob Williams, and Elliott Waldron. The company's core offering is an AI-powered assistant that analyzes and summarizes video meetings across platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Read AI's technology goes beyond simple transcription, providing engagement and sentiment analysis, action item tracking, and personalized meeting recaps. The platform uses a combination of proprietary and third-party AI models to generate insights, including what it calls "Large Meeting Models" (LMMs) that analyze patterns across multiple meetings.

Read AI’s David Shim on Making Meetings More Efficient With Intelligent Agents

Read AI expands beyond single meeting analysis with scheduling, project management, audio recap

Automated Meeting Reports, Transcripts, Notes, Video, Coaching, Scheduling

Read AI expands its AI-powered summaries from meetings to messages and emails

Zoom Community

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

Read AI: Productivity-Focused Company Raises $50 Million (Series B)

Read.ai is an AI platform designed to enhance virtual meeting experiences by automatically joining scheduled meetings, taking detailed notes, and providing comprehensive recaps. Its core offering revolves around real-time transcription, sentiment analysis, and identification of action items to boost productivity. Read.ai integrates with popular video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.Read.ai's main features include multi-language support for English and Spanish, intelligent speaker identification within transcripts, and the ability to transcribe pre-recorded audio/video files up to 300 minutes per month on the free plan. The platform generates AI-driven meeting summaries highlighting key discussion points, keywords, decisions, and action items. Its conversation intelligence capabilities offer insights into meeting quality, participant involvement, mood analysis, and punctuality.In terms of privacy and security, Read.ai complies with GDPR and SOC two Type II standards.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28110">April 2024</a>, Read AI raised USD 21 million in Series A financing round led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from existing investor Madrona Venture Group. The funding was earmarked for further product development.

Hive is a productivity platform for project management and collaboration. The platform provides automated workflows, project planning layouts, and action templates to assign and keep track of project tasks. Hive focuses on improving task execution with instant feedback cycles for editing and approvals. Additional features include note taking (Hive Note), instant messaging, online meetings, and file sharing.Hive offers a variety of ways for teams to organize their projects, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, tables, and calendars, with updates made in one view automatically reflected in all others. The platform allows team members to create action cards with files, sub-actions, dependencies, and comments to stay on top of their objectives, and have access to a personal to-do list that compiles all assigned tasks from all projects. Managers can use Hive to assign approvals, share proofs, provide feedback, and collect project forms from clients and customers. Hive also uses AI and machine learning to provide insights on team productivity and identify potential risks, and to optimize resource allocation and client billing.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s customer base includes Google, Toyota, Comcast, and Starbucks. Hive offers integrations with over 1,000 SaaS platforms, including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Smartsheet, allowing users to import tasks from these platforms.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5208">August 2021</a>, Hive raised USD 10 million in a funding round led by Rembrandt Venture Partners with participation from Zoom, and existing investors Tribeca Venture Partners and Angelpad. Hive is one of the first startups to receive an investment from Zoom’s “Zoom Apps Fund” (a USD 100 million global venture fund). The fresh funds were allocated toward platform development.&nbsp;

Hive

Grain’s software allows users to record, highlight, transcribe, and share online meeting content from tools such as Zoom in an effective manner. It automatically records and transcribes meetings, allowing users to create shareable video clips from highlighted transcript sections. Grain leverages AI to generate customizable meeting notes and answer questions about the transcript. It supports coaching and collaboration through comments and training content creation. The platform offers deal analytics and insights, tracking key account activities and integrating with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and Slack. &nbsp;The company’s products focus on distributed teams, sales, product and user research, and hiring teams.In April 2022, the company acquired Ping Pong, a video messaging platform.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9759">April 2022</a>, Grain raised USD 16 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management. The funds were raised to expand operations and develop its ​​video meeting system of record for content, which allows employees to collaborate around insights, topics, relationships, or teams.

Grain

Air is a creative operations platform designed for creative teams to streamline their workflows and collaborate more effectively. It offers a comprehensive solution that goes beyond basic cloud storage systems, catering specifically to the needs of the creative process. Air allows users to collect content, approve assets, share versions for feedback, and organize their work seamlessly, eliminating the need for additional organizational efforts.Air provides a centralized hub for content collaboration, approval, and versioning. Air's technology streamlines various aspects of the creative workflow, including content collection, asset approval, version control, and feedback sharing. Unlike traditional cloud storage solutions, Air's platform is tailored to the specific requirements of creative teams, enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively.Key customers and PartnershipsThe company’s customer base includes notable firms such as Native, Together, Spindrift, and Univision.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8139">January 2022</a>, Air raised USD 10 million in an “Operator Round” led by Headline with participation from Tiger Global, Lere Hippeau, and 50+ strategic founders and marketing executives including Peter Rahal (Co-Founder, RXBAR), Kipp Bodnar (CMO, HubSpot), and Joe Thomas (CEO, Loom), valuing the company at USD 110 million. The funds were used to accelerate Air’s go-to-market activities and growth.

Acapela was co-founded by Roland Grenke, founder of Dubsmash, a video sharing social media app. Acapela facilitates online meetings without real-time interaction between participants; instead, members contribute to meetings over time.Acapela provides voice and video messages integrated with popular productivity tools such as Asana, Google Workspace, Notion, and Atlassian. Additionally, meetings will generate tasks and meeting summaries automatically. The company identified distributed tech teams as its initial target segment and plans to shift focus toward small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and larger enterprises eventually. The product is currently in invite-only beta.In October 2020, the company exited stealth mode with a USD 3 million seed funding round led by Visionaries Club. The round included Entrepreneur First and other notable individual investors, such as Christian Reber (founder of presentation software Pitch) and Taavet Hinrikus (founder of online money transfer service TransferWise).

Acapela

iObeya is a cloud-based enterprise visual management platform that enables organizations to digitize their Lean, Agile, and Industry 4.0 practices. The platform provides virtual "Oobeyas" (Japanese for "big room"), which are digital collaborative workspaces where teams can align, synchronize, and visualize their work using digital boards, sticky notes, and other visual tools. iObeya's platform allows teams to recreate the in-person experience of paper-based visual management practices with real-time collaboration, enhancing team efficiency, creativity, and problem-solving.iObeya's technology supports a wide range of enterprise use cases, including industrial product lifecycle management, manufacturing operational excellence, product development, and continuous improvement for business performance and agility. It integrates with various systems like ERP, MES, BI, and Application lifecycle Management (ALM) tools such as Atlassian Jira and Microsoft Azure DevOps Server.Key customers and partnershipsiObeya's customer base includes global enterprises such as Airbus, Thales, Volvo, Philips, Cartier, Axa, Eli Lilly and Company, Western Digital, General Electric, Kimberly-Clark, Danaher, and Sanofi.Funding and FinancialsIn July 2020, iObeya raised USD 17 million in a series A funding round led by Red River West with participation from Atlantic Bridge Capital and Fortino Capital Partners. The funds were allocated to develop its platform further and accelerate the company’s expansion in the US.

iObeya

Platforms that provide virtual workspaces using spatial technology to combine a variety of productivity and collaboration tools in a single space.

Platforms that provide standalone presentation software, prototyping and web development software, templates, and design workspaces.

Platforms that facilitate task delegation and tracking with board, timeline, and kanban style views.

Platforms that provide standalone video communication tools and complementary products such as interactive interfaces, presentation features, and transcription software.

Platforms that offer chat and email-based collaborative tools.

Solutions in this industry hub are predominantly offered under a B2B SaaS model

Some solutions in the virtual office and video conferencing segments are based on AR/VR

Facilitates hybrid workforces by offering tools for employees to collaborate regardless of location

Meeting transcription and note-taking apps, design, and project management tools use AI/ML for product development

Read AI is a productivity-focused artificial intelligence company founded in 2021 by David Shim, Rob Williams, and Elliott Waldron. The company's core offering is an AI-powered assistant that analyzes and summarizes video meetings across platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Read AI's technology goes beyond simple transcription, providing engagement and sentiment analysis, action item tracking, and personalized meeting recaps. The platform uses a combination of proprietary and third-party AI models to generate insights, including what it calls "Large Meeting Models" (LMMs) that analyze patterns across multiple meetings.
As of April 2024, Read AI had analyzed over 100 million minutes of meetings. The company's AI assistant integrates with email and messaging platforms like Gmail, Outlook, and Slack to provide cross-platform insights and summaries. Read AI offers features such as AI-powered meeting scheduling based on past engagement data, automated project management, and a daily audio digest of meeting highlights. The company employs a subscription pricing model, with plans ranging from USD 15 to USD 30 per month.
Key customers and partnerships
Read AI has formed partnerships with major video conferencing platforms. Zoom selected Read AI as an Essential App, while Google made the company a launch partner for Meet Add-Ons. Microsoft has also highlighted the startup. The company has seen adoption from a diverse user base, including government agencies, treasury departments, and universities. The company has particularly noted strong adoption in South America and Africa.

Reduct is a cloud-based video editing and storage platform that enables users to transcribe, organize, and edit video content through text-based interfaces. The platform uses automated transcription technology to convert video and audio files into searchable text transcripts. Users can then highlight, tag, and edit these transcripts to create video clips and reels. Reduct's key differentiator is its ability to edit video by manipulating the corresponding transcript text, allowing for efficient review and compilation of interview footage and other video content. The platform supports various file formats and integrates with video conferencing tools like Zoom for direct import of recordings. Reduct also offers collaborative features, allowing multiple team members to work on projects simultaneously. In addition to its core editing capabilities, Reduct provides unlimited cloud storage for video files, making it a comprehensive solution for video post-production workflows.
Key customers and partnerships
Reduct caters to a range of industries and professionals, including researchers, content creators, marketers, and corporate teams. The platform has developed integrations with popular video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro, enabling users to export their Reduct projects as editable sequences in these applications. Reduct also supports Final Cut Pro through XML export.

Reduct

MonkeyLearn is an AI-powered text analysis and data visualization platform that enables businesses to extract insights from unstructured textual data. The platform offers both pre-built and custom machine learning models for tasks such as sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, topic detection, and intent classification. MonkeyLearn's no-code interface allows users to clean, label, and visualize customer feedback data without requiring programming skills. The platform can process various types of text data including customer reviews, surveys, social media posts, and support tickets. MonkeyLearn integrates with popular tools like Excel, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Zendesk, allowing users to connect their existing data sources. In 2023, MonkeyLearn launched an all-in-one text analysis and data visualization studio that provides instant insights with greater granularity. The platform offers customizable dashboards and templates for different business scenarios, enabling users to create visualizations tailored to their specific needs.

MonkeyLearn

Keatext is an AI-powered text analytics platform that specializes in interpreting customer feedback. The company's cloud-based solution synthesizes large volumes of unstructured feedback data from multiple channels, including open-survey questions, online reviews, support tickets, chats, and social media posts. Keatext's platform utilizes deep learning and natural language processing to analyze, cluster, correlate, and track customer opinions autonomously, providing actionable insights through a comprehensive dashboard.
The platform is designed to minimize response time and requires no setup, featuring multilingual analysis and context-sensitive, industry-agnostic understanding. It automatically visualizes correlations and trends, offering immediate report-sharing capabilities. Keatext's technology adapts to various industries without requiring algorithm customization, eliminating the need for keywords, lexicons, and semantic dictionaries.
Founded in 2010 by Narjès Boufaden, Keatext initially operated as a professional services provider. In 2015, the company transitioned to a product-based model with the launch of its cloud-based AI-powered text analytics platform. Keatext's solution helps businesses optimize profitability through customer feedback analysis, enabling them to move from assumption-based decision-making to data-driven, research-based strategies. The platform significantly reduces the time required for analyzing customer feedback, with users reporting that tasks that previously took eight hours can now be completed in 10 minutes using Keatext.

Keatext

Aircover is a sale assistant tool that leverages conversational AI and real-time technologies to enhance the efficiency of sales teams. The platform integrates with virtual meetings, providing sales representatives with up-to-date messaging and positioning information. This approach aims to reduce ramp time for new representatives and products, shorten sales cycles, and increase win rates. Aircover's AI-powered system enforces best practices throughout sales meetings, offering real-time answers to representatives and potentially reducing the number of follow-up meetings required per prospect. The tool is designed to serve a wide range of users, from individuals to large enterprises. Aircover also features a relationship management component, allowing users to store notes and track roles within deals. By putting sales enablement on autopilot, the platform seeks to streamline the sales process and improve overall performance.

Aircover

NeuralSpace is an AI SaaS company that specializes in providing advanced text and voice AI technologies in over 100 languages. Founded in 2019, the company focuses on delivering language AI solutions, particularly for Arabic, Indian, and other low-resource languages predominantly spoken in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. NeuralSpace's platform offers a suite of products including speech-to-text, machine translation, entity recognition, transliteration, data generation, language detection, and text-to-speech conversion. The company's flagship product, VoiceAI, launched in October 2023, provides highly accurate call transcription, translation, and speech analytics for Arabic and Indian languages and dialects, achieving an average accuracy rate of 91%. NeuralSpace utilizes proprietary speech-to-text technology trained on a dataset of 40,000 hours of audio data, which it aims to increase to 100,000 hours. The company's no-code modular toolkit enables enterprises to train and deploy AI models for language processing applications without extensive coding knowledge. NeuralSpace's technology leverages modeling techniques such as transfer learning, multilingual learning, and data augmentation to work effectively with limited text or speech data. The platform can be accessed through a command-line interface, REST APIs, or a no-code GUI, making it versatile for various integration needs.

NeuralSpace

Solutions that use techniques such as named entity recognition, part-of-speech tagging, or summarization to produce insights from unstructured textual documents.

Platforms that summarize conversations, audio, or video files including reactions into text formats.

Tools to identify and analyze the opinions or emotions expressed in survey responses or reviews to produce actionable insights.

Platforms that decipher search queries by analyzing structured and unstructured data based on user intent and behavior.

Solutions that enable real-time conversation through chatbots or automate ticket routing to relevant agents.

Tools that automatically translate text from one language to another.

Tools that detect plagiarism, punctuation errors, or style errors in text.

Companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for natural language processing.

NLP tools such as chatbots are used to cater to each individual

NLP tools are built using AI/ML technologies

Some NLP tools are built using foundation models

NLP tools are provided for other companies to integrate into their workflows

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

<div>
 Read AI, an AI meeting assistant, has successfully raised USD 50 million in Series B funding. The investment round was led by Smash Capital and included contributions from existing investors Madrona and Goodwater Capital.
 In light of the funding, the company aims to speed up product development and expand its workforce from 40 to 100 employees by Q1 2025. The invested capital will also be used to support the provision of free products. This includes a new Chrome extension that presents features such as schedule display, meeting report and insights generation, and a quick add-to-meeting option.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 This round comes six months after Read AI's USD 21 million Series A funding in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/28110"> April 2024 </a> . Since then, Read AI has experienced growth , adding over 100,000 new accounts across enterprises and individual users.

Read AI

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