Granola Secures $43 Million Series B Funding, Unveils Granola 2.0 for Collaborative AI Workspace

London-based AI startup Granola has announced a significant milestone, raising $43 million in a Series B funding round. The investment coincides with the launch of Granola 2.0, an extensive update that transforms the company's AI-powered notepad into a comprehensive collaborative workspace designed for team knowledge sharing and meeting management.

The Series B round was led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross from NFDG, with continued participation from existing investors Mike Mignano of Lightspeed Venture Partners and Nabeel Hyatt of Spark Capital. This substantial capital infusion underscores investor confidence in Granola's vision and rapid growth since its founding in March 2023 by Chris Pedregal and Sam Stephenson. The company plans to expand its London team to accelerate product development.

Granola 2.0 introduces several key features aimed at enhancing team productivity and knowledge accessibility. These include shared team folders for organizing meeting notes, a "Chat with Folders" function that allows AI-driven queries across entire note repositories, and seamless Slack integration for automated summaries and follow-ups. The update positions Granola as a central hub for collective intelligence within organizations.

The platform differentiates itself by focusing on augmenting human note-taking rather than replacing it with intrusive bots. Co-Founder Christopher Pedregal stated, "We founded Granola to put people back in control of the AI tools that shape their working lives." Granola combines user-typed notes with AI transcriptions, allowing the AI to enhance and structure information based on user input.

Prominent investor Christoph Janz, Managing Partner at Point Nine Capital, lauded Granola's approach. In a social media post, he highlighted Granola's "pretty unique UI that enables user-AI collaboration" as a key factor for its success in a competitive market. Janz noted that while transcription quality could improve, the "bot-less solution" and post-meeting AI enhancement of user notes set it apart, suggesting future improvements could include real-time collaboration features.