Building The Future Of Work

Read AI is building the future of work, where every interaction is improved with AI.

Meetings

AI-generated summaries, transcripts, and video highlights to make your meetings more efficient, effective, and valuable.

EMail

Automated summaries, Q&A, and action items generated from your Gmail and Outlook inbox with Read's Productivity AI.

MEssaging

Automated summaries, Q&A, and action items generated across your Teams and Slack messages with Read’s Productivity AI.

Scheduling & More

Go beyond better meetings with Read Smart Scheduler, workflow integrations, and so much more!

Our Story

Productivity AI automates the mundane in meetings, scheduling, email, and messages to centralize and simplify your knowledge sources. Read AI is set to be the independent system of record for productivity AI where people attend fewer meetings, send less emails, read fewer messages, and decisions are as simple as swiping right.

Executive Team

Based out of Seattle, WA, Read AI was founded in 2021 by David Shim, Robert Williams, Elliott Waldron and backed by Madrona Venture Group and Goodwater. The team has founded and led companies that, to date, have generated hundreds of millions in revenue and billions in market valuation across Foursquare, Snapchat, Placed, and Farecast.

Team Members:

  • David Shim
    Co-Founder, CEO
    Former CEO of Foursquare, Founder and CEO of Placed (sold to Snapchat in 2017).

  • Rob Williams
    Co-Founder, CTO
    Former Senior Director of Engineering at Foursquare and Placed.

  • Elliott Waldron
    Co-Founder, VP of Data Science
    Former VP of Data Science at Foursquare and Placed.

Investors

Supported by

Smash Capital’s partnership is grounded in decades of shared history at the highest level of asset management, software, internet, media, and entertainment. Together we have a proven history of global success as both investors and operators of multi-billion-dollar franchises. Smash Capital focuses on investing in growth stage technology companies that are redefining their markets.

Brad Twohig

Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Smash Capital
“Productivity is set to be one of the largest opportunities for AI in 2025. Read AI is the preferred meeting notes solution for millions of users and is poised to bring broader productivity AI to the global masses.”

Goodwater’s mission is to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good.

Coddy Johnson

Partner at Goodwater Capital, Board Member at Read AI
“Read AI empowers every knowledge worker to spend radically less time on process - meetings, emails, and messaging - and more time on what matters most: creating value.”

Madrona is a venture capital firm based in Seattle with nearly 30 years of investing in early-stage technology companies.

Matt McIlwain

Managing Director at Madrona, Board Member at Read AI
“Rather than a co-pilot, Read is building an AI auto-pilot to improve knowledge workers' individual and team effectiveness across meetings, emails, and messages.”

Our Stance on Climate and AI

We believe it is our responsibility to operate sustainably and contribute to the global effort against climate change.

  1. Data-driven Decision Making: We are committed to measuring our energy consumption and carbon emissions to inform our roadmap and larger business initiatives.
  2. Intentional Efficiency: We strive to optimize our operations for energy efficiency and minimize carbon emissions.
  3. Proactive Innovation: We will explore and implement forward-thinking practices while sharing our learnings with the broader community.
  4. Empower Our Customers: We are dedicated to enabling and supporting our customers in their own sustainability journey.

Press Coverage

Articles

  • XDA
    April 16, 2026
    I connected Read AI's MCP server to Claude, and it changed my entire meeting workflow.

  • Design Better
    April 1, 2026
    David Shim, Read AI, and Rachana Rele, Adobe, on amplifying creative work — not replacing it.

  • Katie Couric Media
    March 26, 2026
    The hidden "taxes" women pay at work — and how AI can expose them.

Our Blog

Careers

Interested in building the future of productivity? Read AI is based out of Seattle and is also hiring remotely in the continental US. If you are excited about bringing AI to the mainstream, consider joining Read AI!