Granola - AI notepad that transforms meeting notes into action

What Is Granola

If you're someone who spends most of your day in meetings—back-to-back calls with clients, product reviews, investor updates—you know the feeling. Your calendar is packed, your brain is overwhelmed, and by the end of the day, you can't remember what actually happened in that 10 AM call or what decision was made in the 2 PM sync. You're not alone. Knowledge workers today attend an average of 10+ meetings per week, and the cognitive load of trying to capture everything while actively participating is unsustainable.

That's exactly the problem Granola was built to solve.

Granola isn't another AI meeting recorder that passively captures everything and dumps a wall of transcription text on you. It's something different—an AI Notepad that works with you, not instead of you. Here's how it works: you take your own notes during meetings, capturing the key points and your own observations in real time. Granola simultaneously transcribes the meeting audio locally on your device, then uses advanced AI to instantly enhance your notes—filling in context you might have missed, structuring your thoughts, and turning your raw bullet points into polished, actionable meeting notes.

This is the key differentiator. Granola doesn't replace your judgment; it amplifies it. You're still the one deciding what's important, but Granola makes sure nothing falls through the cracks and transforms your notes into something actually useful.

The results speak for themselves. Granola has raised over $67 million in funding and is trusted by leading companies including Brex, Vercel, Linear, PostHog, Intercom, Ramp, and Replit. The product has been recognized by TIME Magazine as one of the best AI note-taking tools available, and it's backed by prominent tech leaders including Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel CEO), and Ryan Hoover (Product Hunt founder).

The impact is tangible. Brex, a major financial technology company, adopted Granola Enterprise and saw over 50% of their knowledge workers adopt the tool within just 6 months. The results: more than 25,000 hours saved since adoption, with 427 hours saved every single week. That's not just time saved—it's time that teams can redirect toward actually doing the work rather than documenting it.

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Granola's Core Features

What makes Granola so different from other AI meeting tools? It's the combination of your input plus AI enhancement, all happening in the background without any friction. Here's what you can do with Granola.

AI Meeting Notes That Actually Make Sense

You don't need to change how you work. Just open Granola before your meeting, jot down your notes the way you normally would, and let Granola do the heavy lifting. It captures the full audio transcript locally, then intelligently enhances your notes with context, names, decisions, and action items you might have missed. Within seconds of ending your call, you have a structured, professional-quality meeting note ready to share—or keep for yourself.

Chat with Your Transcript—Find Anything Instantly

This is the feature users rave about most. Granola's AI knows the content of every meeting you've ever had in the app. You can ask questions like "What did the client say about pricing?" or "When did we discuss the Q4 roadmap?" and Granola instantly pulls the relevant context from across all your meetings. It's like having a searchable memory of every conversation. You can even ask follow-up questions to drill deeper into specific discussion points.

Templates for Every Meeting Type

Not every meeting is the same, and your notes shouldn't be either. Granola provides tailored templates for the most common meeting types: customer discovery calls, user interviews, 1:1s, interviews, standups, sales calls, and retrospectives. Brex, for example, created custom templates for their interview process, standups, 1:1s, retrospectives, and sales calls—ensuring every meeting type captures the most relevant information.

One-Click Sharing to Your Workflow

Your notes are only useful if they reach the people who need them. Granola integrates seamlessly with the tools you already use—Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Attio, Affinity, and Zapier. Share meeting notes to your team channel, automatically create follow-up tasks in your CRM, or archive decisions in your company wiki with a single click.

Mobile App for On-the-Go Meetings

Granola's iPhone app lets you capture meetings and calls from anywhere—whether you're on a client call, interviewing candidates remotely, or taking notes in a线下 meeting. Your notes sync automatically across all your devices.

No Meeting Bot Required

This is a game-changer. Granola captures audio directly from your Mac or Windows computer, which means you don't need to invite a bot to your Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, or WebEx call. There's nothing for meeting participants to see, nothing to explain to clients, and no friction in getting started.

Enterprise-Grade Security and Control

For larger organizations, Granola offers robust administrative controls including SSO, API data access, organization-wide auto-deletion policies, admin controls over meeting link sharing, and usage notifications at the organizational level. Your data stays under your control.

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Who's Using Granola

Granola is built for anyone who spends significant time in meetings, but it's particularly valuable for specific roles and use cases.

Sales Teams

If you're in sales, you know the challenge—dozens of client calls per week, each with different stakeholders, pricing discussions, and objections. Granola automatically transcribes and enhances your notes, making it easy to generate follow-up emails while everything is fresh. You can quickly identify client budget signals, objections, and next steps without relying on memory. One quick chat with your transcript and you know exactly what the prospect said about their timeline.

Product Managers

User interviews generate enormous amounts of valuable feedback, but it's impossible to capture every detail while actively listening and asking follow-up questions. Granola's template system structures your interviews, and the AI enhancement ensures you don't miss a single insight. When it's time to prioritize features or share findings with your team, your notes are already polished and ready—complete with direct quotes you can reference.

People Managers

1:1 meetings with reports are where critical career conversations happen. Granola's structured templates help you track ongoing topics, action items, and feedback over time. When quarterly reviews come around, you have a complete history of discussions, commitments, and progress—not just vague memories. You're prepared, and your team knows you're paying attention.

Recruiters and Hiring Managers

Interviewing is evaluation at scale. Granola's interview templates help you systematically capture candidate responses, compare them across multiple interviewers, and back up your hiring recommendations with specific examples. Every observation has a quote attached, making your hiring decisions defensible and thorough.

Venture Capitalists and Investors

If you meet with dozens of founders per week, Granola is invaluable. The "Chat with transcript" feature lets you ask questions like "What market size did this founder mention?" or "What was their revenue model?" across your entire meeting history. It's your second brain for every pitch, every diligence call, every portfolio company update.

User Researchers

When you're conducting user research, details matter. The smallest comment can spark a product insight. Granola's transcript chat lets you revisit conversations with the nuance of a real dialogue—ask your notes anything, find exact quotes, and never worry about losing context from recordings that you never got around to reviewing.

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Technical Strengths and Security

Granola's technology was built from the ground up to solve real problems in how meeting notes are captured and processed—without compromising on security or user experience.

Technology Stack

Granola uses best-in-class transcription services including Deepgram and Assembly, combined with advanced AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. The application runs on AWS VPC infrastructure hosted in the United States, with support for macOS, Windows, and iOS platforms. The engineering team includes talent from Apple, Amazon, Google, and Meta.

The Local Audio Innovation

Unlike competitors that require you to add a meeting bot to your calls, Granola captures audio directly from your computer. This approach has several advantages: it works with any video conferencing platform (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex), it doesn't require host permission or create awkward meeting invitations, and it respects meeting participants by not adding an extra "bot" to the call. The audio is processed locally on your device in real time, then transcribed and enhanced.

Data Security and Privacy

Granola takes data security seriously—perhaps more seriously than any other meeting notes tool. Here's what sets them apart:

• No stored audio files: Granola does not retain the original meeting audio. Once transcription is complete, the audio is deleted immediately. This is a significant differentiator from tools that store recordings indefinitely.
• Encrypted storage: All data is stored in AWS VPC with encryption at rest and in transit, plus daily backups.
• Model training controls: Granola does not allow third parties to use your data for AI model training. The company uses anonymized data to improve its products, but users can opt out at any time in settings. Enterprise customers have model training disabled by default.
• Privacy-first defaults: Meeting notes are private by default, with user-controlled sharing options. You can delete personal data at any time.
• SSO and compliance: Enterprise plans include SSO support, and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance is currently in progress. Granola also maintains a public vulnerability disclosure policy.

Environmental Responsibility

Granola demonstrates corporate responsibility beyond security: the company contributes 1.5% of all subscription revenue through Stripe Climate to carbon removal and climate initiatives. Choosing Granola means supporting sustainable business practices.

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Pricing Plans

Granola offers three pricing tiers designed to serve everyone from individual users to large enterprises. All plans include the core AI notepad functionality—the difference is in scale, advanced features, and administrative controls.

Plan Details

The Basic plan is ideal if you're just getting started with AI meeting notes. You get the full AI notepad experience—local transcription, AI enhancement, chat with your transcript, and custom templates. It's enough to understand if Granola works for your workflow.

The Business plan is designed for teams that rely on Granola daily. Unlimited history means you never lose access to past meetings. Advanced AI reasoning models provide deeper analysis for complex meetings. The premium integrations connect Granola directly into your existing tools—automate follow-ups in HubSpot, create Notion documentation, post to Slack channels, and more.

The Enterprise plan is for organizations that need the strongest security and administrative controls. SSO integration works with your existing identity management. Usage analytics show adoption across your organization. Auto-deletion policies ensure data retention complies with your policies. API access lets you integrate Granola data into internal systems.

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Frequently Asked Questions