Particle adds AI-powered podcast clips to its news app

Particle, an artificial-intelligence news application founded by former Twitter engineers, has introduced a new feature called Podcast Clips. The feature is designed to find and surface relevant audio moments across different podcasts, placing them directly alongside related news stories in the user’s feed. Instead of listening to an entire episode, users can play back a specific 45-second segment containing interesting comments or read a synchronized transcript of the audio.

According to Particle CEO Sara Beykpour, the application uses vector embeddings—a machine learning technique used to relate different pieces of content—to understand when specific podcast segments are relevant to a given news story. Beykpour clarified that these embedding models are not generative AI technologies, which are capable of creating new content. “We use vector embeddings to understand that these different parts of the podcasts are related to these different stories,” Beykpour said, noting that a single podcast might cover 10 or 20 stories. The company uses artificial intelligence to manage the clipping logic and determine where segments start and end, while leveraging technology from ElevenLabs to handle the transcription.

The Podcast Clips feature is also integrated with the app’s entity tracking system. Because the platform recognizes entities such as people, places, or things, users can navigate to a profile page for a notable figure—such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—to view a feed of their specific podcast appearances.

Alongside the new audio feature, Particle is launching its first monetization effort through a premium subscription service called Particle+. The optional subscription allows users to access premium features, including personalized audio feeds with customizable voices, natural-language news summaries, unlimited crossword puzzles, and private chatbot queries. The pricing structure for the new service includes:

• $2.99 per month
• $29.99 per year

The feature launch and monetization push come as Particle maintains a significant portion of its user base outside the U.S. Beykpour stated that 55% of Particle’s weekly users are located outside the U.S. India represents the company’s largest market after the U.S., accounting for 15% of the application’s weekly user base.

Why it matters

Podcasts are increasingly becoming primary sources for breaking news and public figure announcements. Particle’s integration aims to capture this commentary directly within its news feed while testing its first monetization model through a new subscription tier.