How Otter.ai’s CEO is pushing the company to be more than just a meeting clerk

Otter.ai CEO Sam Liang is not satisfied with the company being viewed and used as a mere blog post for meetings. Liang wants Otter.ai to become a direct resource for enterprises, and the new suite of products released Tuesday is the first step in that evolution.

A Silicon Valley-based artificial intelligence meeting assistant startup on Tuesday released a new set of tools for organizations designed to better integrate data from meetings into other workflows by routing that information to a central knowledge base. The goal is to grow Otter’s business by helping companies get the most out of the meetings they record.

Otter’s new product suite includes an API that lets users create custom integrations with platforms like Jira and HubSpot, an MCP server — which connects users’ Otter data to external AI models — and a new AI agent that can search company meeting notes or presentations.

Liang told TechCrunch that this is the next phase of Otter’s life.

“We are evolving from just taking notes for meetings to a knowledge base for corporate meetings,” Liang said. “This is a system log of conversations. It can help companies scale their growth and increase measurable business value.”

When Otter was founded in 2016, there were only a handful of companies that met with transcription companies — a far leap from today. The AI ​​boom that began in 2022 has led to an increase in the number of startups such as Granola or circle. Even older players like Fireflies have seen A.J Increase in interest.

Liang argues that this shift puts Otter in a separate division from his former peers.

Meetings are where the majority of a company’s knowledge is stored, in Liang’s opinion, whether it’s notes from a customer sales call or discussions about marketing strategy. But without a central place for these meeting notes, this information can help the company a lot.

“A lot of times, inefficiency is caused by information silos,” Liang said. “One team doesn’t know what the other team is doing, and thinks it was planned a month ago. Often times the plan changes, but not everyone is informed. So, the idea is to create a permissions system so you know that most (non-confidential) information is shared as widely as possible.”

Not every meeting with Otter will be added directly to the company-wide knowledge base and users can choose to restrict access to meeting notes for recordings that deal with sensitive information.

Employee and information privacy remains a concern despite access controls. Even if a meeting is about a neutral topic, Otter’s transcripts capture the small talk and chatter that occurs before and after meetings, which can contain gossip or information intended only for certain participants to hear.

Otter is also a theme Class action lawsuit filed in August Which claims the company was recording private conversations without user consent and using that information to train its transcription services.

Liang said that while he could not comment on the lawsuit specifically, this is not an issue specific to Otter, and that when looking at the bigger picture, having more access to information is better than not.

“If they accuse us, they can accuse anyone else, and all the tools I’ve heard about taking meeting notes,” Liang said. “My view is that we are on the right side of history. We are building this new AI revolution. If you want AI to help you, you have to use AI in meetings.”