35 million users and $100 million in annual recurring revenue - Otter.ai has turned meeting transcription into a real business. Now the company wants to be the search layer across your entire work stack, not just your calls.
The new enterprise search feature uses MCP (Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI tools connect to external services) to pull data from Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, Jira, and Salesforce alongside your meeting transcripts. Search for a project name and you get results from your calls, your docs, and your CRM at once. You can also push meeting summaries directly to Notion or draft a Gmail reply from inside Otter without switching tabs. Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Slack are listed as coming soon.
Bot-Free Recording Comes to Windows
The second release is a Windows desktop app with botless meeting capture. Instead of a recording bot that joins your Zoom or Teams call and shows up in the participant list, it records using your computer's system audio - capturing whatever plays through your speakers. The feature launched on Mac first; Windows users now have the same option.
CEO Sam Liang was candid about the trade-off: "Most of them actually prefer the note taker that joins the Zoom meeting because it provides the transparency." The bot-free approach is most useful when you're auditing a call you didn't organize, capturing a webinar, or sitting in on a client demo where adding a visible bot would feel out of place.
The Bigger Play
The enterprise search bet puts Otter in direct competition with tools like Glean and Notion AI, which are building similar cross-app search for knowledge workers. Otter's argument is that meetings are the connective tissue most search tools miss - the deal was discussed on a call, then someone opened a Jira ticket, then sent a follow-up in Gmail. Using MCP as the backbone means Otter can surface all three from a single query, and can add new integrations without rebuilding each connection from scratch.