Wispr raises $280M at $2B valuation as it looks beyond dictation

Wispr, best known for its AI dictation app, has landed a $280 million Series B led by Menlo Ventures at a $2 billion valuation. The company said Monday that the new money puts its total raised at $361 million.

That is a fast follow-on round by startup standards: less than 10 months after its last one. And the timing says a lot about the market Wispr is playing in. Dictation is getting crowded, with rivals such as Willow, Monolouge, Aqua, and Superwhisper pushing hard, while other teams are building free or cheaper tools aimed at prosumers.

Wispr is not treating this as a one-product story anymore. The company is pushing into meetings with a newly released note-taker, and it says the new capital will help it widen its reach in those adjacent areas. Existing backers including Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, and MVP Ventures all joined again, while Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital came in as new investors.

The company also used the funding announcement to address a quality problem. Users had complained for weeks about a dip in Wispr Flow’s dictation output, and Wispr says a new model called Canto should cut error rates from 30% to under 10%.

Beyond software, Wispr has been broadening how people can use it. Since last November it has shipped its dictation app on Android, expanded go-to-market teams in India and the U.K., and started working with hardware makers such as the Oasis ring so people can dictate more quietly. Its meeting tool already shows summaries and action items, but the company says there is room to connect it to other tools that update documents or draft emails. Last month, Wispr also set up Wispr Interface Labs under Ariya Rastrow, who helped work on Amazon Alexa early on, to explore new ways people and computers can talk to each other.