New Otter feature lets users search across enterprise tools

AI meeting note-taking apps realized that simply transcribing meetings and providing summaries was not enough to justify business models and valuations. They now want to serve as a complete workspace where users can ingest data from a variety of sources, search it all, and make business decisions. Following notetakers like Read AI, Fireflies.ai, and Fathom, Otter is launching enterprise search to act as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) client. This means AI tools can connect to and pull data from external apps and services using common standards that are rapidly being adopted.

Otter has been around for nearly a decade, but in recent months it has started to move toward becoming a productivity tool for businesses. Last October, the company launched a way for organizations to build custom MCPs to access Otter data outside of the app. The company’s latest move revolves around bringing external data into its apps.

With this release, users will be able to connect to their Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, Jira, and Salesforce accounts and query that data along with their existing meeting data. The company said it will soon be able to connect with Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Slack. Not only can users search for data across these tools, but they can also push meeting summaries to Notion, draft Gmail messages, and more.

The company also said it has redesigned its AI assistant to be consistently present throughout the interface so users can ask questions at any time. The Assistant can understand the context of your screen, such as a specific meeting or channel, and answer your questions accordingly.

On the other hand, most note-takers follow Granola’s lead by allowing botless meeting capture, or recording a meeting using the device’s system audio rather than having a bot join the call. Otter said it introduced this feature to its Mac app late last year and is now releasing a Windows app with similar functionality.

There was a debate about whether to take meeting notes with a bot (if the bot joins the meeting) or without a bot. Otter CEO Sam Liang said his company’s business customers prefer having a meeting recorder join the call.

“When I talk to enterprise customers, most companies actually prefer note-takers to join Zoom meetings because it gives them transparency. They also like meeting notes to be shared with all meeting attendees so that the notes aren’t limited to one person,” he told TechCrunch over the phone.

To avoid situations where there are more bots than people on the call, Otter said there is a deduplication feature that prevents swarms of bots from joining a meeting at the same time.

Last year, the company announced it had 25 million users and $100 million in annual recurring revenue. The company did not disclose new financials, but said the platform now has 35 million users.