Wispr raised $280 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures to reach a $2 billion valuation. The company plans to deploy these funds to expand its note-taking capabilities for meetings while addressing recent user complaints about errors in its dictation engine. This capital injection follows a previous round less than ten months ago, bringing total raised to $361 million despite growing competition from apps like Willow and Monolouge. Existing backers including Notable Capital and NEA increased their stakes, while new investors such as Acrew and Forerunner joined the firm. The funding supports the launch of a new model called Canto, which aims to reduce speech recognition error rates from 30 percent to under 10 percent.
Strategic moves include partnerships with hardware makers like the Oasis ring to enable quiet dictation and scaling sales teams in India and the U.K. The startup is also testing interfaces through Wispr Interface Labs led by Ariya Rastrow. Current functionality focuses on generating summaries and action items from meetings, though integration with other tools remains limited. This expansion targets a crowded market where free alternatives are gaining prosumers.
* Error rates drop from 30% to under 10% with the new Canto model
* Partnerships enable quiet dictation via wearable hardware
* Interface Labs explores new human-computer interaction methods
