Wispr raises $280M at $2B valuation, expands past dictation

Wispr, a startup known for its AI dictation tool, raised $280 million in Series B funding, led by Menlo Ventures, at a $2 billion valuation, the company announced Monday. The funds will let Wispr expand its footprint as it ventures into new areas, including meetings, with its newly released note-taker tool. With this round, Wispr has raised $361 million to date; its last round was less than 10 months ago.

The new capital comes as competition in the dictation space intensifies from apps like Willow, Monologue, Aqua, and Superwhisper, among others, and as several developers build free or lower-priced tools for prosumers. Existing investors — including Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, and MVP Ventures — doubled down in the latest round, which also brought in new investors such as Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital.

Alongside the funding, Wispr announced a new model meant to improve the quality of speech understanding. For the past few weeks, several users have complained about a quality dip in Wispr Flow’s dictation output; the company says its new model, called Canto, will reduce error rates from 30% to less than 10%.

Since last November, Wispr has released its dictation app on Android and scaled its go-to-market teams in regions including India and the U.K. It’s also partnering with hardware makers, like the Oasis ring, to let customers dictate on their devices without speaking loudly. Separately, with its meeting note-taker, Wispr is taking on players including Granola, Fireflies, and Read AI; the note-taker can currently display summaries and action items, with room to eventually integrate with other tools or draft documents and emails.

Last month, Wispr announced Wispr Interface Labs, led by Ariya Rastrow, who worked on Amazon Alexa in its early days, to explore new interfaces for human-computer interaction.

Why it matters

Wispr’s pivot from a single-purpose dictation tool toward meetings and broader interface work signals it wants to compete on workplace AI infrastructure rather than a shrinking, increasingly commoditized dictation niche.