Half of a16z's Top50 AI Apps Are Built by Chinese Developers, Plaud hit $180M ARR run rate
A Group Chat AI Agent Raises $8M that I love
Chinese Developers Dominate ~50% of a16z’s Latest Top 50 AI Mobile Apps
a16z today released the 5th edition of its Top 100 GenAI Consumer Apps list, with some new faces joining the ranks.
What stood out most was that nearly half of the Top 50 mobile apps were developed by Chinese teams, mainly focused on image and video, with Meitu alone contributing five apps.
In this edition, Chinese teams emerged as the biggest winners in the mobile segment. According to a16z, 22 out of the Top 50 mobile apps were developed by Chinese teams (though only three primarily serve the domestic market, with the rest mainly targeting overseas users).
The apps are concentrated in the photo and video category. Meitu led the pack with five entries, making it the biggest winner: Photo & Video Editor, BeautyPlus, BeautyCam, Wink, and Airbrush.
ByteDance followed with Doubao and Cici, as well as AI education product Gauth and image/video editing app Hypic.
Other notable entries include PixVerse, SeaArt, Cutout Pro, and PictureThis in the image category, while Hailuo and Kling focus on video generation.
Besides, Manus had one app in the Web Top 50, and another app, Monica, made it into the mobile Top 50.
a16z noted that Chinese teams have a significant advantage in video models, likely due to a larger pool of video-focused researchers and more lenient intellectual property enforcement (allowing training on copyrighted data).
Google’s Veo 3 is the first U.S. model to break this trend, partially trained on YouTube data.
In the Web segment, domestic teams benefit from a large user base. For example, Quark, Doubao, and Kimi (Moonshot) made the top 20, though over 75% of their traffic comes from China.
Plaud Bootstrapped to $180M ARR run rate
In just over two years, Plaud.ai has scaled from zero to a $180 million annual revenue run rate, a rare feat in the hardware-plus-AI space.
Founded in December 2021 and entirely bootstrapped, the company has posted 10x year-over-year growth for two consecutive years, reaching $100 million in 2024 revenue.
Its products now serve 1M+ users across 170+ countries, with nearly 700,000 devices shipped. Unlike most fast-scaling consumer AI startups, Plaud.ai has grown without outside funding, maintaining full control while drawing investor attention from afar.
This growth is powered by a unique blend of hardware and software economics. Plaud.ai’s card-sized recorders created a new consumer category by pairing elegant industrial design with embedded AI transcription.
The companion app layers on recurring SaaS-style monetization: each device ships with free transcription minutes, while subscription plans expand capacity and add advanced features like speaker separation, keyword extraction, and industry-specific content templates.
This model has allowed Plaud.ai to stack hardware revenue with high-margin software ARR, accelerating its financial trajectory far beyond most hardware-first startups.
The newly announced Plaud Note Pro is designed to deepen this dual revenue engine. Priced at $179, it combines premium features—a 1-inch AMOLED display, four-mic array, 50-hour recording capacity, and Apple Find My support—with software upgrades such as real-time highlights and 2,000+ industry templates for structured notes.
By positioning itself as a “thinking partner” rather than just a recording tool, Plaud.ai strengthens its moat in the intelligent note-taking category, ensuring that each hardware sale can drive recurring AI service usage.
With global teams in San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo, and Shenzhen, Plaud.ai has established itself as one of the fastest-growing bootstrapped companies in consumer AI.
Its ability to combine hardware distribution scale with ARR expansion offers a blueprint for sustainable growth in an industry often dominated by heavily funded ventures.
If current momentum holds, Plaud.ai could soon redefine what a hardware-driven AI company can achieve without ever raising a dollar of venture capital.
A Group Chat AI Agent Raises $8 Million
Recently, I’ve been intrigued by a group chat AI agent that just raised $8 million. At first glance, it appears to be a simple product, but demand is significant, and the tool is highly practical.
Its concept is reminiscent of the AI calendar attracted 3M users in less than a year.
Designed specifically for group chats, the AI agent helps users manage information, coordinate plans, and get answers more efficiently.