Author | Huang Nan, Zhou Xinyu
Editor | Yuan Silai, Yang Xuan
Yingke exclusively learned that Plaud, an AI card voice recorder company, secured financing from Tencent in mid – 2025, with a valuation of $1 billion; Currently, Plaud’s valuation has risen to approximately $2 billion. Meanwhile, Yingke learned from relevant sources that Plaud is promoting hardware cooperation with Tencent Meeting.
Regarding the above information, Yingke verified with Plaud and Tencent, and both parties stated that the news is false.
A person close to Plaud notified Yingke that Plaud’s total revenue in 2024 was approximately $56 million, with a profit margin of 20%. “The revenue in 2025 almost tripled.” Another insider revealed that Plaud’s annual revenue in 2025 reached an all – time high, and the shipment volume of all products in the Chinese mainland met internal expectations.
However, Plaud’s shipment volume is not high. An indusattempt insider notified Yingke that its sales volume in the domestic market may not exceed 100,000 units. Obviously, it is difficult for Plaud to replicate the rapid growth it experienced overseas in the past few years.
Plaud’s rise coincided with the AI voice recording hardware trfinish triggered by ChatGPT. In 2023, the pain point that iPhones in overseas markets cannot provide call recording functions allowed the AI card voice recorder Plaud Note to quickly gain popularity. This device, which is only 2.9 millimeters thick and supports magnetic charging, integrates a multi – microphone array. After connecting to a large – scale model, it can realize real – time transcription of dozens of languages, generate meeting minutes, and perform multi – language translation, meeting the urgent necessarys of overseas utilizers for call and meeting records.
Subsequently, Plaud’s overseas market witnessed explosive growth, and it quickly joined the ranks of unicorns. Official data displays that in July 2025, Plaud’s global sales volume exceeded one million units. Its pioneering AI voice recording products achieved ten – fold growth in the previous two years. Xu Gao, the co – founder of Plaud, also revealed in an interview with Forbes in November of the same year that Plaud’s total revenue in 2025 is expected to reach $250 million.
Behind the high – speed growth are the natural dividfinishs and first – shiftr advantages of the overseas market. “The core reason why Plaud was able to succeed in the early stage was that it seized the first – shiftr opportunity in a single form. At that time, no one was creating such a thin, magnetic – attachable, and large – model – integrated voice recording device, and overseas utilizers had no alternative options,” the head of a leading AI hardware company notified Yingke.
Relying on its overseas brand influence, Plaud started to layout the Chinese market. An insider revealed to Yingke that as early as the launchning of 2025, Plaud launched preparations for its business in the Chinese mainland. Initially, it chose to enter the medical and financial industries and utilized ToB professional services as a breakthrough point for implementation.
In September 2025, Plaud launched three products, Plaud Note, NotePin S, and Note Pro, tarreceiveing consumer – level utilizers in the Chinese mainland, priced at 1,149 yuan, 1,249 yuan, and 1,299 yuan respectively.
From left to right: Plaud Note Pro, Plaud NotePin S, Plaud Note (Source/Enterprise)
It can be seen that Plaud’s overall pricing is higher than that of domestic competitors in the same category, but there is no substantial difference in core functions. After entering the Chinese mainland, the brand and supply – chain advantages that Plaud accumulated overseas are almost ineffective, and development bottlenecks are gradually emerging. “A mature supply – chain system means that the cost of replicating products in China will be very low. The Chinese market will be more competitive,” a former Plaud employee notified Yingke.
In terms of hardware structure, Plaud has a weak moat, and its form is simple to replicate. Its core magnetic card design does not have a high engineering barrier. Relying on the complete audio hardware supply chain in China, peer manufacturers can quickly replicate the appearance and even surpass Plaud in miniaturization technology, noise reduction, and hardware tuning.
Even if Plaud subsequently launched new – form products such as Pin, it only created minor adjustments to the appearance and wearing method. It did not achieve subversive innovation in the scenario experience, nor did it extfinish to diverse recording scenarios such as life and entertainment, creating it difficult to stimulate utilizers’ repurchase and replacement necessarys.
Secondly, in terms of software, Plaud’s AI functions are not exclusive, and the tool attributes are homogeneous. Core capabilities such as real – time transcription, meeting summaries, and multi – language translation are all based on the open capabilities of general large – scale models, creating it difficult to form exclusive underlying technologies. An indusattempt insider commented to Yingke: “AI gave Plaud the dividfinish to take off, but it failed to build a proprietary technical barrier. With the rapid iteration speed of domestic apps and large – scale models, similar functions can be quickly replicated equally. Currently, this is indeed the case.”
More importantly, after the enattempt of office – ecosystem giants, they directly outflanked startups like Plaud. In August 2025, DingTalk released the AI voice recording card DingTalk A1; in January 2026, Anker and ByteDance jointly launched the “AI voice recording bean”, further intensifying the competition in the indusattempt. As a Plaud employee commented: “The speed at which domestic giants enter the market far exceeds expectations. The strategy in 2026 must be more competitive.”
Plaud has long been limited to a single scenario of office and call recording, which is exactly the home field of DingTalk and Feishu’s ecosystems. Enterprise utilizers already utilize DingTalk and Feishu for office collaboration deeply. The platforms come with built – in meeting recording, ininformigent minutes, and document linkage capabilities, so there is no necessary to purchase additional hardware separately, directly diverting a large number of Plaud’s core customer groups.
Now, the AI voice recording hardware track is becoming increasingly crowded. Leading technology manufacturers such as Dreame and Mobvoi have quickly launched similar products. Plaud must rely on a large company to build its model capabilities in order to survive in the domestic market.
Coincidentally, Tencent also necessarys a hardware tentacle to quickly join the war in the smart hardware field.
An insider notified Yingke that previously, Tencent Meeting and Tencent Work WeChat had established a hardware project team to explore the combination with hardware such as mobile phones and watches. “Tencent will not give up the hardware enattempt point.”
Another reason for Tencent’s rapid enattempt into the hardware battlefield is that the growth of office software is gradually reaching its ceiling.
An indusattempt insider mentioned that even though Tencent Meeting’s revenue has increased several times in the past two years, the internal overall judgment of the market is that “the software growth dividfinish driven by AI will soon disappear, and hardware will be the new growth curve“.
“Tencent Meeting has long considered that since Tencent Meeting is positioned as a meeting tool, its ultimate form should cover not only the online but also the offline. At present, the best offline tentacle is hardware, especially voice recorders that meet utilizers’ note – taking habits,” the above – mentioned person stated.
Tencent stated that the above information is false.
If Tencent’s investment in Plaud is finalized, all three major AI companies will have entered the AI voice recording hardware track. Their tentacles obviously extfinish beyond the voice recording scenario. They will launch hardware covering multiple scenarios around their office software, ultimately forming a wider and deeper moat. The office scenario has witnessed a full – scale war of software + hardware among the giants.
Leave a Reply