Among the fastest-known AI companies, Plaud stands out as a rare hardware-enabled AI company in a cohort dominated by software-only players.

Plaud, the company building real-world AI interface for professionals, today announced it has scaled from $1M to $100M in ARR within two years, placing it among the fastest AI companies globally to reach the milestone. Plaud is the only hardware-enabled AI company in a cohort otherwise dominated by software-only players, and now serves more than 2 million professionals across 170+ countries.

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The fastest AI growth stories have, until now, belonged almost entirely to software-native companies: AI coding tools, enterprise workflow agents, and other SaaS products scaling behind screens and keyboards. Plaud's growth represents a different model — recurring AI software scaled through a real-world physical interface, with devices (Plaud Note, Plaud Note Pro, Plaud NotePin S) acting as the entry point into human conversations, capturing the upstream, lossless, source-of-truth context.

Most AI today operates after the fact, on summaries, documents, prompts typed from memory. The intelligence that actually drives decisions comes from real-world conversations, before any prompt is written, before any keyboard is touched. When conversation fades, that intelligence decays. Not just information — intent, nuance, the reasoning behind decisions. Plaud is the post-screen, post-smartphone interface built to capture it at the rawest form.

"Most AI companies have scaled through software behind a screen. We took a different path," said Nathan Xu, co-founder and CEO of Plaud. "The conversations that actually move things forward don't happen on a keyboard. We built the interface for the post-screen world. And the market validated it."

As AI moves from screen-based tools toward interfaces and agents that need trusted context to act reliably, real-world conversations are becoming a critical data layer. Plaud is also expanding beyond individual note-taking into team and developer workflows. Plaud Team brings conversation intelligence into collaborative work, while MCP and workflow integrations allow Plaud to connect with the broader agent ecosystem — turning meetings, calls, and in-person conversations into follow-ups, shared knowledge, and actions across the tools professionals already use.

*Disclaimer:

Curves are exponential interpolations between each company's publicly reported $1M ARR and $100M ARR milestones — actual growth shapes between those two points varied and are not depicted. Milestones are drawn from SEC filings, official company announcements, and third party reports; source citations for each company are listed at the end. This comparison is intended to provide directional context on software ARR growth milestones, not an exhaustive market ranking. Companies may define ARR and report commercial milestones differently, and Plaud has not independently audited third-party figures. All third-party company names and logos are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification purposes only; their inclusion does not imply any endorsement of, affiliation with, or sponsorship of Plaud. Plaud welcomes corrections from any featured company at media@plaud.ai.

About Plaud

Plaud is building the real-world AI interface for professionals to amplify intelligence, elevate productivity and performance, loved by over 2,000,000 users worldwide since 2023. With a mission to amplify human intelligence, Plaud captures, structures, and compounds the intelligence generated in conversations — so humans can think better, decide faster, and execute with clarity.

Plaud Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated, San Francisco-based company. With ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA, and EN 18031 compliance, Plaud is committed to the highest standards of data security and privacy protection.

To learn more about Plaud, please visit https://www.plaud.ai and follow along on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260616945160/en/

Media: media@plaud.ai

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