AI notepad for meetings that turns conversation into structured notes and enterprise context
HQ: London, United Kingdom | Founded: 2023 | Employees: 50–75 (est. 2026) | Stage: Series C ($1.5B valuation) | Website: https://www.granola.ai
Granola was founded in 2023 in London by Chris Pedregal (previously co-founder of Socratic, acquired by Google, then product at Google) and Sam Stephenson. It is an AI-powered notepad, not a meeting bot: the Mac app captures audio locally, transcribes meetings, and uses AI to merge transcript context into the user's own typed notes — enhancing rather than replacing human note-taking. The company launched publicly on May 22, 2024 and positions itself as a 'notepad that makes you smarter.' Its product suite expanded in 2025-26 from meeting notes to enterprise context tools, workspaces, and integrations for go-to-market, product and leadership teams. Granola's viral growth came from word-of-mouth among VCs and founders — becoming 'VCs' favorite note-taking app' per Forbes — without heavy outbound marketing.
Granola cracked the AI meeting-notes market by refusing to join the bot parade — no calendar bot joins your call; it listens locally on your Mac, augments your typed notes with transcript context, and ships a habit-forming write-first UX. Launched publicly May 2024, it went from $250M (May 2025) to $1.5B (March 2026) in under a year on a $125M Series C led by Index and Kleiner Perkins, with 400%+ YoY revenue growth. The bull case is distribution via everyday habit plus new enterprise context tools; the risk is bundling by Microsoft, Google, Notion and Otter in a crowded AI-notes war.
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