Read AI is a productivity platform that acts as an AI-powered copilot to automatically record, transcribe, and summarize meetings, emails, and messaging threads across various work platforms. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Read AI CEO David Shim to learn more.
David Shim’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Shim said:
“I’ve had the privilege of founding and building industry-leading companies throughout my career. I was the Founder and CEO of Placed, which pioneered location-based analytics and was later acquired by Snapchat in 2017 and Foursquare in 2019. Shortly after joining Foursquare, I became CEO, where I helped expand the company’s role in the location and movement data space. In each of the companies I’ve founded or led, the connecting theme has been around applying analytics to an emerging technology, whether mobile, AI, or geospatial, to help people and businesses make better decisions. That same passion is what drives me at Read AI, to make meetings more productive.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Shim shared:
“The idea for Read AI came shortly after I left Foursquare, when I found myself spending hours in video meetings every day. What stood out to me was how often people were not engaged, clearly multi-tasking, or in what I started to call ‘Ghost Mode,’ which is no audio, no video. That sparked the idea for a product that could measure engagement and make recommendations on how to improve these metrics in and out of the meeting. I shared the concept with Eric Yuan, the Founder and CEO of Zoom, who told me his team had considered building something similar before the pandemic but had moved away from it. That validation made me confident there was real demand, and from there, we began building Read AI as a meeting measurement solution, which is now the world’s fastest-growing meeting notetaker, and the system of record for productivity across 90% of the Fortune 500.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Shim reflected:
“It’s the unexpected use cases. In 2023, we had an early customer reach out to us, asking to jump on a call. When we connected, the customer introduced their caregiver and stated that they have early-onset dementia and used Read AI to remember conversations with their family, so that when they meet again, they could be reminded about what was discussed. Read AI wasn’t for them; rather, it was for their family, to soften the impact of the disease. This wasn’t a use case that we had planned, but it was one that we took away as a defining moment on the power of AI, not just for enterprises, but for people.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Shim explained:
“We started as a meeting notetaker that measures meeting engagement and sentiment, what we call the narration layer. This unique way of capturing and measuring a meeting gave us signals into the topics that are really important. It’s not the weather or small talk, but that big project where teams are talking fast. So at first, we were simply the best at delivering a smart, actionable meeting report. From there, we’ve expanded into a full AI assistant that engages with you directly and in a human way. Read AI connects all your platforms, integrates all your data, and uses signals like talking speed, email response times, and the repetition of themes and names to deliver actionable insights when you need them. You can easily chat with Read AI and get insights pulled from all of your meetings, messages, documents, and get the answers you need, or agendas drafted, or memos created.”
“This fall we introduced new agent tools that automatically and proactively support you through your day. Just like a really great assistant, these new agents take the edge off your workweek, helping you feel calmer, focused, and ready to achieve your goals. As an example, our Monday Briefing agent can send you an early morning summary of the week’s top priorities, blockers, and last week’s key outcomes. This quick summary shaves about an hour off your morning. Meanwhile, on Thursday, the End of Week agent gives you a rundown of things to achieve before the week closes out. These tools help people gain clarity, save time, and increase productivity, and we have many more tools in the pipeline that build on this vision, with some very exciting new launches in beta now.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Shim acknowledged:
“Privacy and AI go hand in hand. Rather than skirt around the edges of privacy and measure meetings without consent or notification, we always shine a light on Read AI’s presence. Originally, we made a conscious decision to join every meeting as a participant, so people know we were on the call. When we introduced botless recording, we made the conscious decision to remind people to notify others that Read AI was taking notes. We made the conscious decision to always enable users to opt out of measurement and, by default, not train against user data. These aren’t easy decisions because they can impact growth, but they are the right decision ethically. Looking back at this now, this decision is what has resulted in us working with 90% of the Fortune 500, government agencies, and NGOs globally.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Shim noted:
“When we first launched, Read AI was focused on understanding engagement in meetings, and we developed our own proprietary, patented tech, what we call multimodal measurement, to do that. It takes into account signals like words per minute and facial expressions that give us clues that we can then use to make our summaries, transcripts, and action items that much better. Next up, we developed Search Copilot powered by our Free Agent technology. This new model combines hundreds of thousands of inputs from meetings, emails, documents, and workflow systems, and turns it into a knowledge base that Read AI can access, acting like an interactive assistant. With Search Copilot and its chat interface, users can chat and ask questions of their data, retrieve insights, and complete tasks faster. It’s with this new product that we moved from measurement to action.”
“After that, we developed a predictions layer: Using all we’ve developed, and the information we understand about the work, we can make predictions about what we believe users should do next. We use reasoning and contextual clues to give people the information they need right when they need it. In this way, Read AI is not just responsive, but proactive. This tech achievement is the underpinning of the new Workflow Agentic Suite, and our Monday Briefing, End of Week, Topics, Scheduling, and Recommendations agents that support teams so they can move at the speed of AI. Coming soon, we’ll be expanding with digital twin technology, which continues to solve real customer pain points and offer new ways to integrate AI into their workflow. “
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Shim cited:
“In 2023, we experienced product market fit at scale when we applied our foundational models around meeting analytics with transcription and LLMs to deliver a narration layer to meeting summaries that still has yet to be replicated in-market. More recently, it’s when we added a million net new sign-ups in a single month to become one of the largest AI applications in the world.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Shim highlighted:
“A great example of Read AI’s impact comes from Particle41, a software development firm that expanded into AI consulting and fractional CTO services. With a small team and rapidly growing sales demands, sales executive Tony Reese needed a way to unify workflows, streamline CRM updates, and free up time for client engagement. By integrating Read AI, Particle41 transformed how the team operates by automatically updating meeting notes within HubSpot and keeping the funnel up to date with intelligent deal-stage recommendations. Tony has been extremely enthusiastic about the changes, saying that it effectively adds the equivalent of a fourth person to his team and that it gives him incredible confidence. According to him, “Read AI helps bridge the gap from uncertainty to clarity. It makes us look future-ready.’”
Funding/Revenue
Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics? Shim revealed:
“Read AI continues to set new records in terms of new users, active users, meetings measured, and revenue on a monthly basis. Sign ups are up about 400% globally year over year with emerging markets like Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, and India experiencing outsized growth.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Shim assessed:
“In the near future, the storage of intelligence will be the most valuable part of any enterprise. The content that enterprises create today is ephemeral, tied to an individual, rather than the organization. This store of intelligence will be what determines the value of an enterprise, more so than the brand, algorithm, or software. In the age of AI, Read AI’s total addressable market is the collective intelligence of every enterprise.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Shim affirmed:
“If you look at AI, and the companies in our space, everyone seems to be offering a lot of the same: transcription, summarization. We are designed to be a platform-agnostic AI assistant that works across meetings, emails, messages, and documents. No one else is doing that. And we do it from a privacy-centric foundation. We’re willing to do the right thing now, because we see how important that will be for our expansion. If people don’t know they’re being recorded, how can they take advantage of the data that’s created?”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Shim emphasized:
“In the last few years, Read AI has become the system of record for meetings. Now, Read AI is set up to become the system of record for productivity, where you don’t need to search, rather our AI assistant supports you throughout the day, presents you with content, recommendations, and actions, allowing you to make decisions at the speed of AI. In near future, you’ll start to see more features where Read AI is the storage of you and your organization’s intelligence, where the term AI will be replaced with your digital twin.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Shim concluded:
“We recently examined internal data and surveyed workers around the U.S. to better understand how teams that use AI were benefiting, and the results reinforced what we know to be true. AI-empowered teams are finding more time, more focus, and more clarity with AI at their side, and now they want even more support. More than 70% of workers want an AI assistant that helps them maximize their potential and better organize their workloads. Vibe coding was just the beginning; in 2026, we’ll see vibe selling, vibe scheduling, vibe everything. AI is going to be your AI assistant, chief of staff, and indispensable teammate.”
