--- title: 'Plaud — company profile' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/companies/plaud' type: 'company' updated: '2026-07-02' --- # Plaud > AI note-taking hardware and app that records, transcribes, and summarizes your conversations. - **Website:** http://plaud.ai - **Type:** Private (bootstrapped) - **Headquarters:** San Francisco, CA (with teams in Shenzhen, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, and Europe) - **Founded:** 2023 - **Founders:** Nathan Xu, Charles Liu - **Total raised:** ~$6M (Kickstarter + Carbide Ventures) - **Latest round:** Bootstrapped; ~$5M from Carbide Ventures (2025) - **Investors:** Carbide Ventures - **Business model:** Consumer/prosumer AI hardware plus subscription software (hardware DTC + freemium app) - **Industries:** Productivity - **Open roles:** 60 - **Profile:** https://feeny.ai/companies/plaud ## What they do Plaud makes wearable and pocket AI recorders (the Note, Note Pro, NotePin, and NotePin S) paired with an app that transcribes conversations in 100-plus languages, writes summaries and action items, and lets you search across them. It sells the hardware once and charges an ongoing subscription for the AI features. ## Overview **The AI hardware company that turned a profit while everyone else burned cash** Plaud makes a small recorder you clip on or set on a table, and an app that turns whatever it hears into a clean transcript, a summary, and a list of what to do next. That is the whole pitch, and it worked: the company says it crossed a $250 million revenue run rate in roughly three years, and it did it bootstrapped and profitable, with margins its founder likes to compare to Apple's. That makes Plaud a strange bird in AI hardware, a field littered with well-funded flops like Humane and Rabbit. Founded in 2023 by Nathan Xu and Charles Liu, a Shenzhen wearables factory owner, it leaned on China's supply chain to ship real devices and on a subscription app to keep the money coming after the sale. More than two million people now use it across 170-plus countries, and the company is pushing from solo professionals into teams, healthcare, and enterprise. ## What They Do **Capture the conversation, let the AI do the note-taking** Plaud's bet is that the friction of note-taking is a hardware problem, not just a software one. A pin on your lapel or a card on the desk records the room without you opening an app or setting your phone down mid-meeting, and the Plaud app then transcribes in more than 100 languages, writes the summary, and pulls out action items. The company frames this as "intelligence infrastructure" for what you say, hear, see, and think, which is grander than it needs to be. In practice it is an ambient recorder plus an AI layer called Plaud Intelligence, sold to doctors, lawyers, salespeople, and anyone who lives in back-to-back meetings. ## Problems **The meeting happened, now who is going to write it up** Everyone in a meeting is either present or taking notes, rarely both. Plaud's whole reason to exist is to remove that trade-off: capture the conversation hands-free, and get the transcript, the summary, and the follow-ups without replaying an hour of audio. The device angle also solves a quieter problem that pure software struggles with. A dedicated mic sitting near the speaker records more cleanly than a phone buried in a bag, and cleaner audio is what makes the AI summary actually usable. ### Problems addressed - Being present in a meeting versus taking notes, without having to choose - Writing up transcripts, summaries, and action items after every conversation - Capturing conversations hands-free without propping up a phone - Getting usable AI summaries by recording clean audio close to the speaker - Searching back across everything you have recorded - Charting patient visits and logging client calls in regulated professions ## Who It's For **Built for professionals whose day is one conversation after another** Plaud sells to individuals first: doctors charting patient visits, lawyers logging client calls, salespeople capturing deal conversations, and knowledge workers drowning in meetings. The pitch is personal productivity, one device and one subscription at a time. The next act is teams and enterprise. HIPAA compliance and healthcare-specific messaging point at regulated verticals, and a "For Teams" plan plus a 0-to-1 B2B product effort signal a real push past the solo buyer into shared workspaces. ### Ideal customer profiles - **Doctors and clinicians** — Charting patient visits quickly; Staying present with patients instead of typing notes - **Lawyers** — Logging client calls and meetings accurately; Producing reliable records of conversations - **Salespeople** — Capturing deal conversations; Turning calls into follow-ups and CRM notes - **Knowledge workers** — Surviving back-to-back meetings; Getting post-meeting clarity without replaying audio ## Products **A family of recorders, all feeding one AI app** The hardware splits by form factor and setting: the Note and Note Pro are cards for meetings and calls, while the NotePin and NotePin S are wearables for hands-free, in-person capture. Prices run from $159 to $189, and every device is a front end for the same Plaud Intelligence app. The app is where the recurring revenue lives, and it is a genuine product in its own right: transcription in 100-plus languages, AI summaries, an "Ask Plaud" search, thousands of templates, and cloud sync you can turn off if you would rather keep data on-device. Plaud also ships a developer SDK, API, and an MCP integration for building on top of it. ## Business Model **Sell the device once, charge for the intelligence forever** Plaud makes money twice: a one-time hardware sale, then a subscription for the AI transcription and summaries. About half of revenue comes from the recurring app plans, which is what turns a gadget business into a software one with hardware margins on top. The free tier gives you 1,200 minutes a month; the Pro plan is $17.99/month or $99.99/year at that same cap, and Unlimited is $29.99/month or $239.99/year with no minute limit. A Team plan and per-minute add-on packs round it out. It is a classic freemium-to-subscription funnel bolted onto a hardware DTC brand. ### Plans Plaud earns twice: a one-time hardware purchase ($159 to $189 per device) and a recurring subscription for the Plaud Intelligence app. The free tier includes 1,200 minutes of AI transcription per month; paid plans lift the cap or remove it entirely, and about half of company revenue comes from the recurring subscriptions. Add-on minute packs and a Team plan round out the lineup. - **Free** — $0 · Casual and new users 1,200 minutes/month of AI transcription at no cost - 1,200 mins/mo AI transcription - Access to the Plaud app on mobile, web, and desktop - Basic summaries and templates - **Pro Plan** — $17.99/mo or $99.99/yr · Individual professionals The full AI feature set at a 1,200 min/month cap - 1,200 mins/mo AI transcription - 10,000+ official templates - Ask Plaud (AI search) - Template community - Custom templates - Industry glossary - **Unlimited Plan** — $29.99/mo or $239.99/yr · Heavy users in constant meetings Unlimited AI transcription minutes - Unlimited AI transcription minutes - 10,000+ official templates - Ask Plaud (AI search) - Template community - Custom templates - Industry glossary - **Team Plan** — Contact sales · Teams and businesses Shared team intelligence across an organization - Team workspace and shared access - Centralized management - Team-oriented AI features Good to know: Free tier included at 1,200 mins/mo AI transcription; Add-on minute packs available: 600, 3,000, and 6,000 minutes; Hardware is a separate one-time purchase from the subscription; Fast shipping (1-2 business days), free 30-day returns, one-year warranty, and lifetime customer support on devices ## Competition **The hardware bet is the moat, and also the risk** Plaud's rivals split in two. On software there is Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai, meeting assistants that need no extra device; on hardware there was a graveyard of ambitious AI gadgets like Humane and Rabbit, whose failures Plaud partly benefited from by staying narrowly useful instead of trying to replace the phone. The edge is the device itself: ambient, hands-free capture that a phone app cannot match, paired with a sticky subscription. The catch is the same thing. Asking people to carry and charge another gadget, and to trust one ecosystem with their conversations, is friction that pure-software rivals simply do not have. In China the fight is harder still, with ByteDance and DingTalk shipping their own recorders. ### Their edge - **Hardware-native capture** — A clip-on or desk device records ambiently and hands-free, which software-only meeting assistants cannot match, and a dedicated mic yields cleaner audio and better transcripts. - **Subscription attach on a gadget** — About half of revenue is recurring app subscriptions, turning a one-time hardware sale into durable software-style revenue. - **Bootstrapped profitability** — Reached a reported $250M run rate profitably without meaningful venture funding, while rival AI hardware startups burned cash and folded. - **Supply-chain proximity** — Co-founder Charles Liu's Shenzhen wearables factory gives Plaud direct access to the hardware supply chain. ### Where they're betting - Pushing from individual users into teams and enterprise (For Teams, a 0-to-1 B2B product) - Healthcare and regulated verticals (HIPAA compliance, clinical charting messaging) - Deepening the Speech LLM research lab (in-house speech models) - Global go-to-market expansion across Europe and Asia - Migrating the storefront to headless commerce (Shopify Hydrogen) ## What People Say **Loved when it works, cursed when the sync breaks** The praise is consistent: on clean audio the transcripts are accurate and the AI summaries genuinely save time, and reviewers like the discreet, hands-free capture far more than propping up a phone. For meeting-heavy professionals, the after-the-fact clarity is the whole point. The complaints cluster around reliability and lock-in. Some users hit failed uploads, sync delays, or connection issues, which sting because the product depends on cloud transcription, and a few report hardware wearing out after months. The other recurring gripe is philosophical: it is one more device to carry, charge, and tie yourself to. ## Funding **Bootstrapped to $250M, with Tencent rumors it keeps denying** Plaud is the rare AI company that barely raised money. It started with a roughly $1 million Kickstarter in 2023, took a small check of around $5 million from Carbide Ventures, and otherwise funded itself, so the founders still own most of it. Revenue did the heavy lifting: about $56 million in 2024 at a roughly 20% margin, then a near-tripling to a reported $250 million run rate in 2025. The valuation is murkier. Reports pegged a mid-2025 Tencent investment at a $1 billion valuation, later chatter put it near $2 billion, and both Plaud and Tencent have called the reports untrue. Treat the number as unconfirmed; the profitability is the part that is actually documented. ## Team & Culture **A Shenzhen-to-San-Francisco company that moves fast and ships** Plaud is distributed by design, with engineering, product, and go-to-market teams across San Francisco, Shenzhen, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, and Europe. Founder Nathan Xu based hardware in Shenzhen deliberately, to sit next to the supply chain, and pairs it with a US commercial front. The stated values run toward first-principles thinking, using AI to the fullest, and "human first," and roles are hybrid at three days a week in office. Culture here reads as high-velocity and AI-native. Engineering and analytics postings openly expect people to build with Cursor, Claude, GPT, and Gemini as the default, and the recurring words are ownership, craftsmanship, and speed. Many roles are framed as founding-team seats on brand-new initiatives, which is the flip side of a young company still standing up its systems and its security program from scratch. ## Compensation **Real bands, real equity, and a wide spread for AI research talent** Plaud discloses pay on many of its US roles, all in dollars and annualized, and the range is genuinely wide. Engineering lands roughly $140K to $285K on most postings, with design and marketing bands sitting a notch lower, while the standout is the Speech LLM lab, where a couple of research roles stretch to $200K to $540K base. Compensation is a package, not just base. Roles carry an Employee Stock Ownership Plan or equity plus a performance bonus, so the equity upside in a bootstrapped, profitable company is a real part of the story, not a footnote. ## Security & Legal **A recorder that has to be trusted with what it hears** For a product built to record private conversations, trust is the whole game, and Plaud stacks the certifications to prove it: SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and the EN 18031 hardware standard. The company says data is encrypted in transit and at rest, is never sold or used to train its models, and can be kept on-device rather than in the cloud if you choose. The registered entity is Plaud Inc., at 8 The Green, Ste A, Dover, Delaware, a Delaware-incorporated company operating out of San Francisco. Security is clearly a live buildout rather than a finished one: recent job postings describe standing up the SIEM, CSPM, incident response, and SOC 2 Type II evidence largely from zero. ## In the News **The press trail behind a quietly profitable AI story** Plaud's coverage tracks one arc: an under-the-radar hardware maker that turned profitable while flashier AI startups stalled. Forbes framed it as one of the few AI companies actually making money, and Asian tech press has chronicled both its supply-chain playbook and the on-again, off-again Tencent rumors. The links below are the source trail for the claims on this page, from founder interviews to the funding reports the company disputes. ### Coverage - [How An AI Notetaker Became One Of The Few Profitable AI Startups](https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2025/09/02/how-an-ai-notetaker-became-one-of-the-few-profitable-ai-startups/) — Forbes (2025-09-02) - [Plaud Secures Investment from Leading Big Firms, Hits $2 Billion Valuation](https://eu.36kr.com/en/p/3799129165863937) — 36Kr (2026-05-08) - [Tencent's rumored Plaud deal points to looming AI hardware contest](https://kr-asia.com/tencents-rumored-plaud-deal-points-to-looming-ai-hardware-contest) — KrASIA (2026-05-12) - [How Plaud AI built the most successful AI voice recorder](https://thelowdown.momentum.asia/how-plaud-ai-built-the-most-successful-ai-voice-recorder/) — Momentum Works (The Low Down) - [Z Potentials | Plaud.ai CEO Xu Gao, A Serial Entrepreneur, Creator of the Globally Popular AI Voice Recorder](https://zpotentials.substack.com/p/z-potentials-plaudai-ceo-xu-gao-a) — Z Potentials - [NYSE Spotlight: Plaud's Wearable AI Notetaker with Founder CEO, Nathan Xu](https://www.plaud.ai/blogs/news/nyse-spotlight-plaud-s-wearable-ai-notetaker-with-founder-ceo-nathan-xu) — Plaud Blog ## Outlook **From a solo gadget to team intelligence, if the software keeps up** Plaud has the enviable problem of a working business: profitable, growing fast, and expanding from individual users toward teams, healthcare, and enterprise, with a stated ambition of reaching tens of millions of professionals. The subscription attach rate is what makes any of it durable. The risks are the ones a hardware-plus-cloud company always carries. Reliability complaints, the friction of yet another device, deep-pocketed rivals now entering the category, and a security and business-systems program still being built out are all real. The next chapter is whether the software and the enterprise motion mature fast enough to match how quickly the hardware sold. ## Company details - **Mission:** Amplify human intelligence by building the infrastructure to capture, extract, and use what people say, hear, see, and think. - **Products:** Plaud Note Pro, Plaud Note, Plaud NotePin S, Plaud NotePin, Plaud Intelligence (app), Plaud Cloud, Device SDK & API - **Customer segments:** Individual professionals, Healthcare / medical practitioners, Legal, Sales teams, Teams and enterprises - **Buyers / users:** Doctors and clinicians, Lawyers, Salespeople, Knowledge workers in constant meetings, Team and enterprise buyers - **Competitors:** Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Humane (defunct), Rabbit, ByteDance (China), DingTalk (China), Tencent Meeting (China) - **What sets them apart:** Dedicated hardware for ambient, hands-free capture rather than a phone app; Hardware-plus-subscription model with roughly half of revenue recurring; Bootstrapped and profitable, rare among AI startups; Shenzhen supply-chain access via a co-founder who owns a wearables factory; Privacy posture: data not sold or used to train models, optional on-device storage; Broad compliance stack (SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001/27701, EN 18031) - **Tech stack:** Shopify (Hydrogen / Storefront API storefront), Contentful, Klaviyo, AWS, GCP, Snowflake, Okta - **Integrations:** MCP, Device SDK & API, CLI, Shopify, Klaviyo ## Open roles (60) - [Mobile Engineer - Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/4376e796-7a9c-4007-ad6f-75d69dbc3a0d) — Singapore - [Full-Stack Engineer, Mobile & SDK - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/3a36edb2-0070-4d6e-b91a-b9e5dda187b4) — San Francisco, CA - [Workplace & Employee Experience Specialist -Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/68fd2526-79e6-43c8-a999-11c57927d5d9) — Singapore - [Influencer Marketing Senior Manager - San Francisco/Los Angeles](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/55225932-8355-470b-ae93-0de0e42315a2) — San Francisco, CA - [Lifecycle Marketing Senior Specialist- San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/737a27e9-d016-426c-aa25-32f3890b4dd1) — San Francisco, CA - [Manager of IT & Digital Transformation](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/1edb8c47-46b7-40a4-aef7-74516ee4c906) — San Francisco, CA - [Product Marketing Manager (Software/AI) - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/af692aaf-d916-4f67-8697-0e2850be938c) — San Francisco, CA - [Human-Computer Interaction Designer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/e85829ba-d786-4d5b-b511-2328def92c53) — San Francisco, CA - [Machine Learning Engineer, Speech LLM Training - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/4d892e32-6245-4ce4-8047-d77394b8932a) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Industrial Designer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/c9b0defe-8d06-49e1-b842-ff2c397461b0) — San Francisco, CA - [Customer Service Team Lead - Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/3f44d882-61b6-4d6a-b603-4069b2634062) — Singapore - [Senior Data Scientist, B2B Product - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/0bcd95d7-bcd5-4185-b947-752738cea328) — San Francisco, CA - [AI Automation Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/c4b99f9b-1436-458b-809f-fdfe3fa1bd14) — San Francisco, CA - [Data Scientist, B2B Growth - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/698017cc-8d18-4776-9188-671e777a174f) — San Francisco, CA - [Influencer Marketing Specialist インフルエンサーマーケティングスペシャリスト - Tokyo](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/01ece6e0-8791-4489-8a60-f43c416160a2) — Tokyo, Japan - [Machine Learning Engineer, Inference & Serving (Speech LLM) - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/01f7453c-0f8f-456a-9182-3fe539ffec41) — San Francisco, CA - [Mobile Engineer (Contractor) - Palo Alto](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/284468e5-ef86-4c8a-b458-2ba68bff17d2) — Palo Alto, CA - [Full Stack Engineer (Contractor) - Palo Alto](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/4d8d319c-e5cf-47e8-b0eb-007d24f84850) — San Francisco, CA - [Business System Lead](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/04a26b05-7ff4-414c-97fb-27ca4cac5f25) — San Francisco, CA - [Germany PR Specialist - Berlin/Amsterdam](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/1a34b0a9-0721-4a3f-abc1-419020ad3c04) — Europe - [Head of Hardware Product Design - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/58eeeaa5-92f8-485e-94d9-26979963000c) — San Francisco, CA - [Staff Product Designer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/aa927da3-a888-43c9-9ca6-76e70a52c497) — San Francisco, CA - [Full Stack Engineer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/93433d23-0fc2-4554-8f74-f9bb570295be) — San Francisco, CA - [Integrated Marketing Manager 統合マーケティングマネージャー - Tokyo](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/c24ac121-7606-4084-ba95-acb90f0178b3) — Tokyo, Japan - [Quality Assurance Engineer (Contractor) - Palo Alto](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/e0b1ba1a-01c9-494e-b622-cb8eb95aa6ab) — San Francisco, CA - [Mechanical Engineer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/952b6072-9d5c-4367-a7e7-fd1c94c9abe3) — San Francisco, CA - [Backend Engineer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/34572169-f146-49e9-938b-5c48317f0a7d) — San Francisco, CA - [Global Talent Acquisition Partner-San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/9c5b07c7-e225-4c6a-81e0-78cb899c28ba) — San Francisco, CA - [TPM - Digital Transformation](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/4de38470-d9fd-4c80-929a-f2379e515d8b) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Security Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/c2b90220-4121-4913-a932-514b0a0098c0) — San Francisco, CA - [HR Operations Specialist, San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/efd5fc29-cb78-46a5-bcc6-04d766479c21) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Security Engineer - Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/1ce06fc4-f4e8-4f72-86f6-54f1deebbb03) — Singapore - [Security Engineer, Infra & Operations - Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/11c8e6a3-af44-4908-b3be-3ff8c1ade844) — Singapore - [UK Influencer Marketing Manager - AMS/London](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/ee198596-2e94-4fdf-9053-98f6b70b7dbb) — Amsterdam, Netherlands - [Global Talent Acquisition Program Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/bccc275a-cf6e-4a07-9616-896359fd10ac) — Singapore - [Integrated Marketing Manager - Thailand](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/9f400586-60f3-4a80-80ba-da8aceffe4ea) — Singapore - [Influencer Marketing Manager - Amsterdam or Berlin](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/b9493670-68f5-4763-b9c5-a1b35e0d5e6e) — Amsterdam, Netherlands - [HR Business Partner - Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/52713572-f646-4dd3-8302-0001378f1877) — Singapore - [Senior SRE Engineer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/4106fa24-a247-4a2a-be46-625d71e78383) — San Francisco, CA - [Site Reliability Engineer - Singapore](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/b8e2cc8f-c4c0-47a6-bb15-7747c8381d4a) — Singapore - [Senior Full-Stack Engineer -Headless Commerce](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/d5a5ea33-c6ed-44ab-ad1c-ff597c5e89ea) — San Francisco, CA - [Benelux Integrated Marketing Manager](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/1284674e-013b-4b19-8940-0e6ff44bb210) — Amsterdam, Netherlands - [Influencer Relations Manager - Tiktok](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/fff54676-7f32-42b2-b7a9-7cb9ca1ebbf4) — Amsterdam, Netherlands - [Growth Product Manager Lead, AI Commercialization](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/de70e9b7-0f95-4aae-b8fb-3339ecebb5e3) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/32fb0190-3a98-4615-9934-a4042dfb1497) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Full Stack Enginner - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/f44f96c7-5a11-45ba-a252-8104cc4c0e55) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Community Engagement Specialist - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/ad15ccfb-bac7-4efe-b3da-871a07fce4f4) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Mobile Engineer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/ecf3e881-5ca7-4b81-9016-9dec4518a620) — San Francisco, CA - [Global Brand Director - San Francisco](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/4b607a95-62b2-450c-8ab5-df18e25566fa) — San Francisco, CA - [Senior Product Marketing Manager, Americas - San Francisco/ Los Angeles](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/plaud/e7b129c7-01c8-4ca6-b352-ba0b95aa2064) — San Francisco, CA _…and 10 more at https://feeny.ai/companies/plaud/jobs_ --- _Source: https://feeny.ai/companies/plaud · profile updated 2026-07-02_