At a moment when most AI companies are under pressure to demonstrate that users will actually pay for what they're building, Plaud has grown annual recurring revenue from $1M to $100M in under two years — not through a web app, but through hardware devices that sit in your pocket during meetings.
San Francisco-based Plaud announced the milestone today, putting it alongside the fastest-known ARR growth trajectories in AI. The company has more than 2 million professionals using its products across 170 countries, and its revenue comes from Plaud Intelligence, the software layer that powers a range of physical devices including the Plaud Note, Note Pro, and NotePin S.
The distinction matters in the current market. The dominant model for AI tooling is a software subscription accessed through a browser. Plaud's argument — backed now by $100M ARR — is that many of the conversations worth capturing don't happen on a keyboard. Meetings with a client, calls from a mobile phone, in-person strategy sessions: these are where decisions are made, and they're outside the reach of screen-based tools.
"Most AI companies have scaled through software behind a screen. We took a different path," said Nathan Xu, co-founder and CEO of Plaud. "The conversations that actually move things forward don't happen on a keyboard. We built the interface for the post-screen world. And the market validated it."
The company is now expanding beyond individual note-taking. Plaud Team brings conversation intelligence to collaborative workflows, while MCP integrations connect Plaud's captured conversations to agent-based systems and tools users already work with — turning meetings into follow-ups, shared notes, and actions across the broader software stack.
Plaud is ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, and EN 18031 certified. It is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Francisco.
To stay across the latest in cloud, AI and enterprise tech analysis from Compare the Cloud, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at https://www.comparethecloud.net/newsletter
