Read AI Valued at $450 Million After Series B Funding

By Zaheer Kachwala

(Reuters) – Read AI, a productivity and AI automation startup, announced on Monday that it is valued at $450 million following a series B funding round led by Smash Capital.

The company successfully raised $50 million in this round, with participation from existing investors Madrona and Goodwater Capital, just six months after raising $21 million in series A funding.

Increased enthusiasm around generative artificial intelligence technology has helped AI startups secure investments from prominent private equity and venture capital firms.

Read AI offers a platform aimed at improving meeting efficiency through features such as note-taking, summarization, and transcription.

In a separate announcement, the company unveiled "Read AI for Gmail", a free Chrome extension that consolidates information from various applications like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, reducing the need for multiple app switches.

By launching free features like "Read AI for Gmail", the company aims to enhance platform adoption and anticipates increased enterprise sign-ups as more functionalities are added, according to David Shim, co-founder and CEO of Read AI.

Shim also indicated that the funding would sustain the company for the next few years, with plans to utilize the proceeds for expanding the engineering, data science, and business teams.