Wispr Flow nearly triples its valuation to $2 billion

The AI dictation company said on Monday it has raised $280 million in a Series B round

AI startup Wispr Flow has nearly tripled its valuation to $2 billion in nine ​months, underscoring investor enthusiasm for voice tools that let users ‌work and write hands-free.

The AI dictation company said on Monday it has raised $280 million in a Series B round, led by existing investor Menlo Ventures and including ​current backers Notable Capital, NEA and Neo Ventures. New investors ​included Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater and Peak XV.

Based in San Francisco (U.S.), Wispr had ⁠raised $25 million in a Series A extension round in November ​last year at a $700 million valuation. The total funding has now reached $361 million.

​Venture capital internationally is flowing increasingly toward AI, robotics and chip startups, fuelling a surge in billion-dollar companies, faster follow-on rounds and sharply higher valuations for a ​select group of high-growth firms.

Wispr Flow, whose software converts speech ​into text for writing and workplace tasks, said its products are used at more ‌than 10,000 ⁠enterprises.

The value may be there if the growth rate survives, since triple digit quarterly growth off a small base is the easiest number in venture capital to generate for a few quarters and ​the hardest one ​to keep producing ⁠once the early adopters stop being the entire customer base, said Michael Ashley Schulman, partner at Cerity ​Partners.

The company on Monday also unveiled a preview ​of Canto, ⁠its first proprietary speech-recognition model.

We built this model for where people actually use Flow. In the hardest conditions, with background noise, wind, heavy accents ⁠or ​music, error rates fall from more than ​30% of words to somewhere between 5% and 10%, CEO Tanay Kothari said in ​a blog post.