The Ideation of Plaud
Plaud is a LLM-native technology company. Our philosophy is to push the frontier of intelligence through the combination of hardware and software.
We currently offer three AI native devices (Note Pro, Note, and Pin), one mobile app (Plaud), a forthcoming desktop product, and a web platform (Plaud Web). But these are not true value we intend to offer, the true value lies within PLAUD intelligence, the product offering we have are keys to access intelligence. Our core product is Plaud Intelligence.
Conversation as Intelligence
We believe that conversation itself is intelligence. Conversations are projections of how intelligence perceives and understands the world. Yet historically, the intelligence embedded in conversations has never been well captured or structured—and therefore could not be used.
Sensors combined with LLMs ahs changed this.. For the first time, machines can truly understand human language. The intelligence hidden in conversations can now be captured, extracted, and utilized—fundamentally transforming how people work.
There are two types of working individuals the way I see it:
Those who create and deliver value through computers and tools.
Those who create and deliver value through conversations.
The latter group is large and essential to society—salespeople, consultants, advisors, negotiators—yet they rarely benefit from technological (LLM) advances. Plaud exists to change this. By capturing the intelligence within conversations, we aim to serve them. Plaud is their IDE, their LLM - natived workstation.
Three Ways to Pursue the Frontier of Intelligence
We see three main approaches to pursue the frontier of intelligence:
Train foundation models.
Treat intelligence as a commodity—using LLMs to retrieve public information and produce outputs like PPTs or websites.
Combine hardware and software—aligning human context with the model’s intelligence.
Plaud chooses the third. Through Plaud, the model can hear what you hear, can see what you see,and understand what you intend. In turn, the LLM brings unmatched memory, attention, wisdom, and knowledge to maximize the utility of intelligence—enhancing performance and productivity.
Why AI Native Devices Are Necessary
When Steve Jobs pulled the iPhone from his Levi’s 501 pocket and called it an iPod + browser + phone in one, he was introducing a new paradigm. But cell phones were never designed to capture offline context. That requires new hardware.
At Plaud, we believe context is everything. Ultimate personalization is the ultimate moat. That is why we built Plaud as a wearable device—slim, elegant, attached to the back of your phone or worn on your body—to act as the most natural sensor for your offline context.
Capturing context is only the beginning. The next step is to extract intelligence from it through software and models, and transform that intelligence into productive material—extract and utilize.
From Summaries to Intelligent Value
Plaud is not only about retrieval or summaries. It is about intelligent value.
When you accumulate massive amounts of context, the intelligence inside is immense. LLMs surpass human limits in memory and attention, and they combine this with knowledge no individual could ever possess. This allows them to uncover wisdom, perspectives, knowledge, and connections hidden within your context—often beyond human imagination.
Multimodal input expands these dimensions further. Images add new layers of meaning. A single press-to-highlight conveys what truly matters to the user. Together, these enable the model to think from the user’s perspective and surface even deeper value.
On both our app and web platforms, we’ve designed features that help users extract intelligence from as many dimensions as possible—empowering them to ask unexpected, profound questions, and receive insights beyond imagination.
From Capture to Active Companionship
Once intelligence is captured, the question becomes: how do we best utilize it?
We hold a few contrarian beliefs:
Work is more than paper-work, thinking and making decision are also part of it.
The boundary of intelligence is not about paperwork and producing PPTs, but about better thinking and better decision-making.
True intelligence is proactive.
With enough context, the model can move from passive to active—uncovering gaps in our reasoning, surfacing insights we missed, and pointing us toward ideas we would not have considered.
This is the vision of Plaud Intelligence: not just a tool, but a work companion—a trusted aide, like a chief of staff (My favorite analogy is Doug in the House of Card).
Our Vision
This is Plaud.
We aim to create a new way of working for those whose value is built on conversation.
We aim to align human context with LLMs through hardware–software combination.
And we aim to push the frontier of intelligence together with our users.
—Peter
Written on the occasion of Plaud App 3.0 & Plaud Intelligence launch