Canto cuts Wispr's word error rate from 30% to under 10% in noisy conditions

Wispr, the startup behind the dictation app Wispr Flow, said Monday it raised $280 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation.

The round was led by Menlo Ventures. The cash gives Wispr fresh capital to deal with accuracy complaints and to move into meetings as rivals flock to the voice-to-text market.

The round brings Wispr’s total to $361 million

The financing takes Wispr’s total funding since its founding in 2021 to $361 million. It closed its last funding round less than ten months ago. The company had raised around $81 million prior to this round.

Menlo Ventures, a backer of Wispr, led the Series B round. Existing investors, including Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, and MVP Ventures, added more. Wispr also brought in new backers, including Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital.

Wispr’s competitors are popping up, including apps such as Willow, Monologue, Aqua, and Superwhisper, as well as a wave of free and cheaper tools targeting power users.

Wispr released the funding news alongside a preview of Canto, its first in-house speech model, after several users complained recently that Flow’s dictation had gotten worse.

Canto is designed for noisy real-world use, not just for pristine studio recordings, the company says. In the hardest conditions, with background noise, wind, heavy accents, or music, Wispr said word error rates drop from more than 30% to between 5% and 10%.

That is more than a 4x reduction. In day-to-day usage, the company expects the model to reduce the number of dictations a user has to edit by 30% to 35%.

“The whole reason to talk instead of type is to stay inside your own train of thought,” wrote CEO and co-founder Tanay Kothari in a company blog post.

One wrong word sends users back to the keyboard and breaks their focus, he added.

Notetaker takes the fight to Granola and Otter

The “beyond dictation” pitch is focused on Notetaker, a meeting tool Wispr shipped about a week before the raise.

It records calls and in-person conversations, labels speakers on a live transcript, and produces topic-organized summaries with dates, decisions, and next steps.

That means Wispr is up against Granola, Fireflies, Read AI, and Otter. Notetaker records audio locally and doesn’t join calls as a visible bot, said Sahaj Garg, CTO and co-founder.

That puts the burden on users to disclose in states where consent is required to record, he said. Two of its competitors, Otter and Granola, are currently facing separate California lawsuits alleging privacy violations.

Wispr also set up the Wispr Advanced Interfaces Lab led by Chief Scientist Ariya Rastrow, who was a founding member of the team that created Amazon’s Alexa. The lab is looking at interfaces that respond to what a user says, not just transcribe it.

Along with the venture firms, Wispr’s round included a roster of athletes and cultural figures. They include Livvy Dunne, Shaun White, Dak Prescott, Joe Burrow, Klay Thompson, Paul George, and Trae Young.

Domantas Sabonis, three-time NBA All-Star and one of the investors, said Flow keeps up as he switches between English, Spanish, and Lithuanian.

Wispr says people have written over 60 billion words with Flow, and almost all Fortune 500 companies and 10,000+ enterprises use the app.

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