Read AI, a startup that hopes to build a future of work where every interaction is improved with AI, today announced it has raised a $21 million in Series A financing. The round was led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from existing investor Madrona Venture Group.
Read AI was founded in 2021 by David Shim, Robert Williams, and Elliott Waldron and has now raised over $32 million to date. This funding comes on the heels of a year of exponential growth, with a 12x increase in monthly active users and a 15x increase in measured meetings across 40+ countries. The company says the additional capital will be used to accelerate their mission of building the future of work, where every interaction is enhanced with AI.
Alongside today's funding announcment, Read AI is expaning its "Readouts" AI-generated summaries to cover email and messaging on platforms like Gmail, Outlook, Teams, and Slack. These intelligent agents work quietly in the background, enabling meetings, emails, and messages to interact with each other, providing personalized, actionable briefings tailored to individual needs and priorities.
"Read is about getting to the heart of work – creating value, not sorting emails, expanding threads, and sitting in meetings," said David Shim, CEO of Read AI. "By turning dialogue into action, Read ensures every conversation moves you to value and impact."
Coddy Johnson, Partner at Goodwater Capital, will join the Board of Directors alongside Madrona's Matt McIlwain and David Shim. "Read AI empowers every knowledge worker to spend radically less time on process - meetings, emails, and messaging - and more time on what matters most: creating value," said Johnson. "Based on third-party data analysis, Read AI is not only the fastest-growing meeting note-taker, it is also one of the fastest-growing consumer utility apps of all time."
Within 24 hours of connecting email or messaging, Read AI learns the most relevant topics based on emails, messages, and channels. On average, Read AI's summaries condense 50 emails across 10 recipients and 56 message threads across 7 participants into a single topic. These "Readouts" deliver auto-updating reports throughout the day, including the latest updates, summaries, assigned action items, timelines, and source links.
"Rather than a co-pilot, Read is building an AI auto-pilot to improve knowledge workers' individual and team effectiveness across meetings, emails, and messages," said Matt McIlwain, Managing Director at Madrona.
Read AI's technology brings immense potential to transform team dynamics and productivity. However, integrating AI tools like this raises important questions about conversational habits, power dynamics, and the very nature of knowledge work. While AI can provide unprecedented insights into engagement and contribution, it also necessitates a careful consideration of privacy, inclusivity, and the potential for technology to inadvertently silence or marginalize voices.
The success of Read AI and similar technologies will hinge on their ability to thoughtfully integrate their solutions—balancing these concerns and mitigating downsides, while enhancing productivity without disrupting conversational habits and compromising the human elements of work.