Parrot, an AI-powered transcription platform that turns speech into text, raises $11M Series A

Artificial intelligence touches many aspects of professional industries, including medicine, legal, business, information technology and more. AI-powered transcription service is one example that has become an integral part of those fields.  

Parrot, a transcription platform offering speech-to-text depositions for the legal and insurance industry, said Tuesday it has raised $11 million in a Series A round. It also unveiled a new feature that summarizes deposition in mere seconds for legal experts.  

Amplify Partners and XYZ Venture Capital co-led the latest capital, bringing its total raised financing to $14 million since its inception. The company declined to reveal its valuation when asked. 

Attorney Eric Baum, his brother Bryan Baum and a team of engineers with expertise in AI and speech-to-text transcription founded Parrot in 2019. Eric, a long-time prosecutor who conducted depositions at the special victims unit of the State Attorney’s Office of Florida, saw firsthand the shortage of court reporters as demand for the deposition service continues to grow every year and wanted to streamline the deposition process by using large language models (LLMs) not only for the legal industry also for other sectors. 

“The improvements in LLMs are the next paradigm shift, akin to the internet and mobile,” general partner of Amplify Partners Mike Dauber said in a statement. 

CEO of Parrot Aaron O’Brien, who has been in the tech space for more than 15 years and previously worked at tech firms like Flexport, Uber and Facebook, told TechCrunch that Parrot’s founding team saw an opportunity to bring much-needed technology to the legal industry that has been overlooked and underserved for a long time.

“You’ll often hear that lawyers are resistant to tech, but this hasn’t been our experience,” O’Brien told TechCrunch. “Attorneys are eager to adopt new technologies, but the solutions need to be trustworthy and purpose-built for their workflow.” 

O’Brien met the Parrot founding team in 2021, introduced by Parrot’s early investors. O’Brien has since helped the AI startup scale a growing deposition provider with global insurance carriers. 

Parrot AI’s ultimate goal is to allow users to gather and synthesize information more efficiently in order to achieve better and faster outcomes by leveraging AI. 

The startup plans to use the proceeds to ramp up investment in artificial intelligence for the legal and insurance domains and continue developing tools to address the industry’s challenges. 

Customers in need of court transcription services typically must call or email a court-reporting vendor and wait days for confirmation, O’Brien said. Parrot lets users book a deposition and secure capacity with one click and meeting-ready calendar links will be sent to all parties, O’Brien explained. 

Another challenge Parrot wants to address is related to deposition review: After a deposition concludes, attorneys must request an expensive transcript, which takes more than ten days to receive. Parrot’s deposition review tools help attorneys access a fully searchable, highly accurate rough draft transcript synced with video and audio, which is one of the company’s highest-value features, O’Brien continued. In addition, Parrot securely stores a comprehensive archive of deposition transcripts, video and audio recordings, and more in its cloud-based platform, he noted. 

“At the core of Parrot’s differentiated model is our highly specialized models that are trained extensively on proprietary and domain-specific data,” O’Brien said. “Parrot’s approach is not another enterprise’s solution built on top of generic API — it’s a suite of highly customized models, infrastructure and domain expertise years in the making that offers unprecedented accuracy for legal professionals.” 

One customer, Aaron Warner, Attorney at Warner & Fitzmartine, described the experience of Parrot is like “going from a Nokia to an iPhone.” according to the startup that claims once customers begin working with Parrot — from C-suite executives focused on budget and outcomes to the support staff responsible for scheduling depositions — they’re saying there’s no going back. 

Hundreds of enterprises’ customers, including law firms, insurance companies, law enforcement and corporations, use Parrot for depositions, witness statements, examinations under oath and more. The outfit didn’t share its business metrics but noted that the four-year-old company generates revenues in the millions.