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Otter.ai Founder and CEO Sam Liang on Why A.I. Will Make Typing Obsolete Soon

By turning meeting transcriptions and notes into structured knowledge, Otter aims to power smarter A.I. agents and unlock more effective workplace automation.

When Sam Liang co-founded Otter.ai in 2016, A.I. was not yet a household buzzword. In the years since, however, the transcription and notes-taking platform has evolved alongside the technology that powers it. Today, its built-in conversational knowledge engine helps users make sense of their business and personal lives by drawing on their own database of meeting recordings. Liang envisions a future where typing—even to a chatbot—becomes largely obsolete.

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“When people use chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, one of the biggest problems is context,” Liang told Observer. “It takes a lot of effort to write a good prompt and provide all the context, but when you bring A.I. into the conversation, it has all the context.”

Used by 86 percent of Fortune 500 companies, Otter surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue last year. The company raised $73 million in venture funding in its first five years and exceeded 35 million users late last year. It combines external integrations—such as Google Workspace and Anthropic’s Claude—with internal innovations like agentic chat, which can pull data and complete tasks. Even large banks with strict compliance requirements are in discussions with Otter about incorporating the technology into their workflows, Liang said.

Otter has managed to compete with Big Tech firms like Microsoft and........

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