Wispr Flow’s founder has revealed that the San Francisco based AI startup has raised more than $81 million without ever formally pitching VCs, turning the usual fundraising script on its head. In a viral post, CEO Tanay Kothari wrote that each round came the same way: the team stayed “heads down building”, and investors like NEO’s Ali Partovi, Notable Capital’s Hans Tung and Menlo Ventures’ Matt Kraning literally showed up asking what it would take to lead the next round.
What the founder is really saying
Kothari explained that while “most investors need social proof” and want to know who else is in the round, the best ones behave differently. He contrasted typical followers with “pre‑emptive investors” who show up early, pay tomorrow’s valuation for today’s company and are willing to bet on vision before the metrics or even a pitch deck exist. These investors, he argued, have independent conviction, do not panic “when shit gets chaotic”, and stick around because they believed when nobody else did, instead of simply following momentum when a round is already hot.
The post is both a flex and a lesson. It positions Wispr Flow as a company so clearly useful that top-tier firms chase it, while sending a message to founders that the investors they really want are the ones who create rounds, not those who wait for consensus and social proof.
we've raised over $81M for @WisprFlow without pitching investors.
— Tanay Kothari (@tankots) December 15, 2025
every round has gone the same way:
> we're heads down building.
> then a vc shows up at our office.
> "what do we need to do to lead your next round?”
all while we weren't even raising.@apartovi at neo did…
What Wispr Flow does
Wispr Flow builds an AI-powered dictation and “voice OS” layer that aims to replace the keyboard as the primary way people input text into their devices. Its flagship product, Flow, lets users speak naturally and then converts that speech into clean, edited, ready-to-use text that works across apps and websites. The software automatically strips filler words, fixes grammar, formats text based on context and learns a user’s style via a personal dictionary and snippet library.
Originally started as Wispr AI working on neural interfaces and silent speech recognition hardware, the company pivoted toward software after seeing traction with its voice layer. Flow launched first on Mac in late 2024, then expanded to Windows, and rolled out an iOS app in 2025, quickly becoming a daily tool for VCs, founders, writers and developers who think faster than they can type.
Financials, growth and usage
Wispr Flow is not disclosing detailed revenue, but public interviews and investor commentary describe very strong usage metrics. The company says Flow is used daily across more than 25,000 apps and sites, helping hundreds of thousands of users move from “thought to text” at speeds up to around 4 times faster than traditional typing. Internal data shared in press releases indicates that after six months, the average user writes about 72% of their characters with Flow, and around 90% of what they say needs no manual editing, a huge jump over legacy dictation tools.
Growth has been heavily word-of-mouth for wispr flow. A podcast interview with Kothari highlighted that roughly 90% of Wispr Flow’s adoption came organically, with the team personally onboarding early users and then watching the product spread virally among professionals. Usage is reportedly growing about 50% month-on-month, with a global footprint that includes around 40% users in the US, 30% in Europe and 30% elsewhere, helped by support for more than 100 languages and strong non-English usage.
Funding rounds and valuation
Wispr Flow has now raised a total of $81 million across multiple rounds.
Key milestones include:
- A 2021 seed/early round of about $4.6 million led by NEA and 8VC when the company, then called Wispr AI, was focused on neural interface hardware.
- A $30 million Series A in June 2025 led by Menlo Ventures with participation from NEA, 8VC and prominent angels such as Carta’s Henry Ward and Pinterest cofounder Evan Sharp, bringing total funding at that point to $56 million.
- A $25 million follow-on round in November 2025 led by Notable Capital with Steven Bartlett’s Flight Fund also participating, taking cumulative funding to $81 million and valuing the company at around $700 million post-money, according to TechCrunch sources.
In his post, Kothari named Ali Partovi (NEO), Hans Tung (Notable Capital) and Matt Kraning (Menlo) as examples of these “pre‑emptive” investors who leaned in early, led rounds and effectively “created” them rather than waiting for others.
Founder background and vision
CEO and cofounder Tanay Kothari previously worked in product and engineering roles in Silicon Valley, and has framed Wispr’s mission as building a “voice operating system” that makes technology more conversational and reduces the friction of typing, context switching and constant screen time. Wispr Flow’s broader ambition is to sit on top of every device and app as the main input layer, and the company is already working with unnamed hardware partners to power next-generation AI-first interfaces.
The fundraising story he shared is meant to underscore that if a product becomes indispensable to the right users, especially investors themselves, capital often chases the team instead of the other way around. In that sense, the $81 million raised without formal pitches is as much a commentary on product-market fit and investor psychology as it is on Wispr Flow’s own trajectory.
