Google’s AI note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM took off to a spectacular reception at launch, capturing people’s imaginations with its ability to quickly whip up summaries and reports, and turn reams of documents into “podcasts” with AI hosts discussing the topic to help users in their research.
Inspired by the success of the project, three devs who worked on NotebookLM since its inception are now building an audio-first app called Huxe, which can similarly help users dive deep into topics by generating a “podcast” with multiple AI hosts. The startup said on Tuesday that it had raised $4.6 million in funding from Conviction, Genius Ventures, Figma CEO Dylan Field, and Google Research’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean.
The app launched on an invite-only basis in June, and is now available to everyone on iOS and Android.
Raiza Martin, along with Jason Spielman and Stephen Hughes, left Google in December 2024 to explore their own ideas. They initially launched a chatbot slanted towards more B2B use cases, but decided to focus on the consumer market and built a personal assistant in March 2025 that could generate personalized images, videos, and audio.
“During this phase, we realized that people liked having the ability to generate audio for different topics. We also observed that people often used the app at specific times to get their daily brief or catch up with news while getting ready,” Martin told TechCrunch.
That insight led the three to lean into audio and build Huxe.
Huxe essentially gives you a daily briefing based on the emails you receive and by connecting to your calendars to understand your schedule. It also lets you explore topics, and like NotebookLM, it will generate a podcast with AI hosts discussing the topic. You can interact with the AI hosts at any point in time, ask questions about the topic, or request them to explain points in a different way.
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What’s different here is that Huxe lets users build a “live station” of any topic, like tech news, sports, or even celebrity gossip. After you listen to a station, the app will give you updates by tapping different sources — helpful for following developing news. There’s also a personalized interest feed, which automatically generates audio content that might interest you.
Martin said that during the early NotebookLM days, a cohort of power users drove the product feedback, and Huxe is seeing similar signs.
“This is a well-suited product for people who spend all day on their screens with tons of tabs open on their browser. People who might want to catch up on their email, schedule, and news can do that without looking at their screen,” she said.
Huxe currently is suited to the information market, but entertainment can be a possible use case, too. India-based audio companies like Pocket FM and Kuku FM, for example, tap AI to let users create content. And Huxe is not the only one using audio as a medium. Startups like ElevenLabs and Oboe are leveraging audio, too, as are Google and Meta.
Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web.
You can contact or verify outreach from Ivan by emailing im@ivanmehta.com or via encrypted message at ivan.42 on Signal.
