Meeting notetaker Read AI on Thursday launched an AI-powered email-based assistant called Ada, saying it helps users manage their schedules, answer questions based on a company’s knowledge base, and reply to out-of-office emails.
The company is calling Ada a “digital twin” that handles tasks for you around the clock. Read AI said that the assistant will be available to all users, and they can start configuring it by sending an email to “ada@read.ai” and writing “Get me started.”
When you ask Ada to find a time to meet with someone, it replies to the other person in the thread with your availability. If the other person replies that they are unavailable at those times and would like a different time slot, Ada responds with new options. While Ada has access to your calendar through Read AI, it does not reveal the nature of those meetings with other people.
Ada can also answer questions using a company’s knowledge base, topics discussed in your prior meetings, and public internet searches. For instance, you can ask, “Ada, can you provide an update on how we are tracking for Q1 goals?” to get information.
If someone else asks a question in a thread, Ada will prepare a response for you and help you refine it before it is sent to the other person. The startup said that Ada doesn’t reveal any sensitive information without your permission.
Read AI’s VP of Product, Justin Farris, said that the new feature doesn’t rely on MCPs (model context protocols, a technical standard for connecting AI tools to external services), and instead builds a knowledge graph based on meeting data and connected services for more contextual answers. He added that over time, the assistant will also take proactive actions for you. For instance, if you mentioned a follow-up item in a meeting, Ada will ask you to set that up after the meeting with contextual data.
“The way I describe our solution is that when you are bringing on a new employee, you train them. When you add Ada to your workflow and connect more services to give more context, it starts to ramp up and handle more tasks for you,” CEO David Shim told TechCrunch.
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The company said that while Ada currently works via email, it will soon be available on Slack and Teams.
On the sidelines of Web Summit Qatar earlier this month, Shim told TechCrunch that the company now has over 5 million monthly active users and plans to grow that number to 10 million. He mentioned that the company sees 50,000 sign-ups every day and has a broader base of 100,000 users who consume Read AI’s content, like meeting summaries, without creating an account.
For Read AI, the U.S. remains the largest market with strong international growth. While 60% of users are outside the U.S., the revenue is split roughly equally.
The company, which has raised over $81 million in funding, is increasingly adding AI-powered tools to its suite. Last year, it launched Search Copilot for knowledge discovery for users, and last month it added the ability to update customer-service relationship software, send custom emails from within a meeting report, and stay up to date on topics based on internal and web knowledge.
Other meeting notetakers are also offering new tools to extract more insights and actions from meeting notes. Last September, Granola added “recipes” in the form of repeatable prompts to surface knowledge from meeting data. Quill, which came out of stealth with a $6.5 million funding round this week, also connects to various tools like Linear, Notion, and CRMs, and aims to automate tasks.
