Granola, a startup whose artificial intelligence software has been gaining traction as a notetaking tool among Silicon Valley workers, is raising $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Index Ventures.
Index partner Danny Rimer will join Granola’s board as an observer. Kleiner Perkins is also participating in the funding round, alongside existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Spark Capital.
Granola’s product transcribes conversations and uses AI to turn rough-draft meeting notes into complete summaries. Chief Executive Officer Chris Pedregal said that many of its corporate customers, which include companies like Cursor and Gusto, have adopted the technology after individual employees started using it. Something similar happened at Index, Rimer said: Multiple people at the firm were using the technology by the time he considered investing.
As of mid-March, Granola’s revenue had grown by 2 1/2 times since the beginning of the year, Pedregal said, declining to disclose specific revenue figures.
Alongside the funding, the startup is launching new features for its app, including integrations with AI coding tools like Anthropic PBC’s Claude Code, as well as team workspaces where employees can pool their notes.
Granola’s next act, Pedregal said, will be to introduce agentic AI features to allow users to perform tasks using the information they’ve gathered in the startup’s note files. While the CEO declined to share specifics about the plans, he said he expects the integrations within the next year. The company’s agentic AI ambitions were “paramount” in Index’s decision to invest in Granola, Rimer said.
Founded in 2023, five years after Pedregal sold his last AI startup to Google, Granola now has about 55 employees. “It’s obvious our team is too small for what we want to achieve,” Pedregal said. But he said the startup is being careful about how quickly it hires, since it’s not clear yet how AI will change workforce needs in the long run.
Some industry watchers believe that AI note-taking, already a competitive space, is on its way to becoming a commodity. Pedregal doesn’t disagree. It’s part of why he envisions much more for Granola’s future.
“I never would’ve entered this space if what I wanted to do was just to generate meeting notes. It was a commoditised, oversaturated space before we started Granola, let alone now,” he said. “We’re just at the beginning of how we’re going to collaborate with AI to do work.”
Index partner Danny Rimer will join Granola’s board as an observer. Kleiner Perkins is also participating in the funding round, alongside existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Spark Capital.
Granola’s product transcribes conversations and uses AI to turn rough-draft meeting notes into complete summaries. Chief Executive Officer Chris Pedregal said that many of its corporate customers, which include companies like Cursor and Gusto, have adopted the technology after individual employees started using it. Something similar happened at Index, Rimer said: Multiple people at the firm were using the technology by the time he considered investing.
As of mid-March, Granola’s revenue had grown by 2 1/2 times since the beginning of the year, Pedregal said, declining to disclose specific revenue figures.
Alongside the funding, the startup is launching new features for its app, including integrations with AI coding tools like Anthropic PBC’s Claude Code, as well as team workspaces where employees can pool their notes.
Granola’s next act, Pedregal said, will be to introduce agentic AI features to allow users to perform tasks using the information they’ve gathered in the startup’s note files. While the CEO declined to share specifics about the plans, he said he expects the integrations within the next year. The company’s agentic AI ambitions were “paramount” in Index’s decision to invest in Granola, Rimer said.
Founded in 2023, five years after Pedregal sold his last AI startup to Google, Granola now has about 55 employees. “It’s obvious our team is too small for what we want to achieve,” Pedregal said. But he said the startup is being careful about how quickly it hires, since it’s not clear yet how AI will change workforce needs in the long run.
Some industry watchers believe that AI note-taking, already a competitive space, is on its way to becoming a commodity. Pedregal doesn’t disagree. It’s part of why he envisions much more for Granola’s future.
“I never would’ve entered this space if what I wanted to do was just to generate meeting notes. It was a commoditised, oversaturated space before we started Granola, let alone now,” he said. “We’re just at the beginning of how we’re going to collaborate with AI to do work.”
