Granola Launches an Apple Watch App for AI Meeting Notes. The Unicorn Wants You to Leave Your Phone in Your Pocket.

juillet 28, 2026 admin

By OFOKI TECH | July 28, 2026

Granola, the AI note taking company that reached a $1.5 billion valuation in March 2026, has released an Apple Watch app that lets users record and transcribe in person meetings directly from their wrist. The launch, announced on July 28, 2026, and first reported by TechCrunch, does not require a paired iPhone to be pulled out during the conversation. The app can be set as a watch face for one tap access.

The move is Granola’s first dedicated wearable product. The company’s iOS app, which launched in April 2025, already supported in person meetings and outbound phone calls. The Watch app extends that functionality to a device that is always on the wrist and, in Granola’s internal testing, absorbed a significant share of mobile usage that previously ran on iPhones.

What the Watch App Does

Users can set the Granola app as one of their watch faces. Tapping it starts a transcription session immediately. The app also surfaces reminders about upcoming meetings pulled from the user’s calendar. After the session ends, the transcript and AI generated notes sync to the iOS app and the desktop versions for macOS and Windows.

The app is designed for in person conversations. According to Granola’s documentation, it cannot transcribe virtual meetings on mobile because iOS does not allow third party apps to capture audio from other applications. That limitation applies to both the iPhone and Apple Watch versions. Outbound phone calls made through Granola’s built in dialer on iOS can be transcribed, but this feature is iPhone only.

Granola’s co founder and CEO, Chris Pedregal, told TechCrunch that the Watch app is meant for situations where pulling out a phone is awkward or impossible, such as walking one on one meetings. The company said that when it tested the app with employees who owned Apple Watches, a large portion of their mobile usage shifted from the iOS app to the Watch.

The Company Behind the App

Granola was founded in 2023 in London by Pedregal and Sam Stephenson. The company operates on a freemium model: the first 25 meetings are free, after which users must subscribe. It is available on macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. The iOS app launched on April 30, 2025, according to the company’s update log.

In March 2026, Granola raised a $125 million Series C led by Danny Rimer at Index Ventures, with participation from Mamoon Hamid at Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and NFDG (the fund run by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross). The round valued the company at $1.5 billion, up from $250 million during its $43 million Series B in May 2025. Total funding raised to date stands at $192 million, according to TechCrunch, The Next Web, and The Times.

Granola’s core product is a notepad application that transcribes audio locally from the user’s device, without injecting a visible bot into video calls. After a meeting, the AI combines any notes the user typed with the transcript to produce structured summaries, action items, and templates. The company has reported 10 percent weekly user growth since launch, according to Reworked.

Enterprise customers include Vanta, Gusto, Thumbtack, Asana, Cursor, Lovable, Decagon, and Mistral AI, according to the March funding announcement.

The Competitive Landscape

Granola is not the only company targeting wearable meeting notes. Monologue, a cloud based dictation app launched in September 2025 by Every Media Inc, added Apple Watch support earlier in 2026 and offers context aware formatting through a feature called DeepContext. Monologue is priced at $15 per month, with a free tier limited to 1,000 words. Unlike Granola, Monologue does not offer a bring your own key option for AI processing, according to comparisons published by Spokenly and Utter.

Other competitors in the AI note taking space include Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and Jamie. Otter and Fireflies typically join meetings as visible bots, an approach Granola avoids. Jamie also captures audio locally without bots, positioning it as a direct rival.

The Technical Context

Granola’s transcription engine uses a combination of Deepgram and AssemblyAI for real time automatic speech recognition, with dynamic routing across language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, according to a podcast interview with Pedregal. The company has built internal evaluation tooling that allows it to swap underlying models without altering the output format that users see.

The Apple Watch app does not process transcription on the watch itself. Audio captured by the Watch microphone is sent to Granola’s servers for processing, then the results are pushed back to the user’s account. This means the app requires an internet connection and does not offer offline transcription on the wearable.

What Remains Unclear

Granola has not disclosed how many users it has in total, nor what percentage of its user base owns an Apple Watch. The claim that « a big chunk » of mobile usage shifted from iOS to the Watch during internal testing comes from the company’s own reporting and has not been independently verified.

The pricing for the Apple Watch app has not been specified separately from the main Granola subscription. It is unknown whether Watch usage counts against the 25 meeting free tier or whether the wearable is treated as an extension of the iOS app.

The company has also not announced plans for an Android Wear version. Given that Granola’s Android app exists but lacks some features available on iOS (such as Granola Chat), a Wear OS equivalent may not be imminent.

The Apple Watch app cannot transcribe virtual meetings due to iOS system limitations. Whether Apple will relax these restrictions in future operating system updates, or whether Granola will find a workaround, is unknown.

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