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BY Rob Pegoraro

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Eight years ago, Otter.ai’s pitch for its transcription app was pretty straightforward: The Mountain View, California-based startup would turn audio into readable text in real time. And it would do it for free. But in 2026, the company is now competing against a chorus of competitors that all leverage AI to provide real-time transcription. Otter’s answer to that challenge amounts to changing the channel—to go beyond transcribing to extracting insights from all that banter.

“As our CEO Sam [Liang] has shared a number of times, a transcription was never the end goal,” says Otter’s new CMO Alex Gay.…