The productivity-focused artificial intelligence startup Read AI Inc. said it had closed on a $50 million Series B funding round today, coming just six months after it raised $21 million via a Series A round.

Today’s round was led by Smash Capital and saw participation from existing Madrona and Goodwater Capital. It brings the company’s total amount raised to $81 million, following its earlier seed investments.

Read AI has created a generative AI-powered text, audio and video content summarization tool that enables enterprise workers to understand quickly what’s happening across all of the communication and collaboration channels they use, such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Gmail, Zoom, Outlook, Salesforce and Hubspot.

It explains that it wants to help accelerate the way people work by enhancing their digital interactions and making them more efficient. Its generative AI tools listen in on user’s video calls on Teams, Meet and Zoom, taking notes so they can quickly summarize what’s been said at the end of the call. It eliminates the hassle of taking notes or simply having to remember what was said, saving time and ensuring nothing important was missed.

Read AI also provides tools to coach users so they can become better speakers. It analyzes the user’s performance in meetings, then provides tips on what they can do to improve their speaking abilities, so they can be more clear and concise in future meetings.

The startup’s expertise also lends itself to email and messaging summarization. Users can connect their email and collaboration platform accounts to it, so it can read them all — just as its name suggests. Doing this, it effectively unifies all of the user’s communications, so it can provide them with a personalized, actionable briefing each day that lays out the tasks they need to prioritize.

Coinciding with today’s funding announcement, Read AI is launching a new tool called Read AI for Gmail, which is part of its new “copilots everywhere” initiative. It says the tool can help to transform Gmail into a productivity hub with smart AI summaries, a feed that provides contextual insights from previous messages and meetings, and automatic responses to emails and messages for busy workers. It’s available now as a free Chrome browser extension.

The company explained that Read AI for Gmail integrates directly with the user’s Gmail account to streamline email management by surfacing the most relevant information relating to the user’s work. For instance, if a client sends an email about an important project update, Read AI will pull related content, such as notes from earlier meetings and prior emails, to provide context around that update. It can also use that context to draft a response to the email.

For lengthy email threads, it will generate a concise summary of everything that has been said, highlighting all of the key points and action items. It will also integrate contextual information from Slack, Zoom, Teams and Meet if the user has communicated with the same client on one of those channels.

Read AI co-founder and Chief Executive David Shim said the introduction of Read AI for Gmail kicks off the company’s vision of a copilot for everywhere you work, where your messages are connected to meetings in your inbox, and where threads can be summarized and replies quickly drafted on behalf of users.

“With the launch of Read AI for Gmail, we’re using your existing workflow, email and introducing an AI copilot to a platform used by billions of users,” he explained. “By bringing meeting and message data directly into your inbox, we’re not changing workflows, we’re improving them by delivering a copilot everywhere you work.”

The round follows a period of rapid growth for Read AI, which says it has added more than 100,000 new users since its prior funding round. It added that it has an 81% retention rate for those new users.

“In the age of AI assistants and agents, Read AI has gone from upstart to incumbent with a 720% increase in active users in the last 12 months,” Shim added.

Smash Capital Managing Partner Brad Twohig said he believes productivity is one of the biggest opportunities for the generative AI industry in 2025. He thinks Read AI is already the clear leader in terms of its meeting note-taking capabilities.

“In the past year, Read AI has become the standard across meetings on Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams,” Twohig said. “With the addition of its Slack, Hubspot and Salesforce integrations, it is set to expand its footprint in both enterprise and consumer markets with its vision of an AI copilot everywhere you work.”

Featured image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer