# Voibe

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/voibe/ · added 2026-10-27 · updated 2026-10-27

**In short.** Voibe (Private AI dictation and meeting notes app for Mac and Windows, United Kingdom): US$8K in a single month, June 2026. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: Founder Ayush, who posts the figures; the company's jobs page speaks of "the founders" and "a small team"; headcount not published. Launched September 2025; still running.

Private AI dictation and meeting notes app for Mac and Windows · United Kingdom · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · still running · group: Voice and audio

- Outcome: US$8K in a single month, June 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: D; headline in US dollars: 96000)
- Launch: September 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 9
- Team: Founder Ayush, who posts the figures; the company's jobs page speaks of "the founders" and "a small team"; headcount not published
- Outside funding: None disclosed
- Main factor: Pricing
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Running, B2B, Productivity

**The product.** A desktop app for Mac and Windows: the user holds a key, speaks, and the text appears in whatever app has the cursor. On Apple Silicon Macs the speech model can run on the computer itself; otherwise the audio goes to cloud providers that, the company says, keep no copy. Since September 2026 a second plan, Voibe Work, also takes meeting notes from the computer without a bot joining the call. The company now sells it to lawyers, health workers and finance teams who handle confidential text.

**Why it worked.** The company says Apple's built-in dictation "is prone to accuracy errors", and that typical dictation and note-taking apps keep recordings on their own servers. Voibe offered on-device dictation tuned for people who write long prompts to AI tools. The founder posted that most of the money came from lifetime licences, and that he planned to raise prices and move revenue to subscriptions.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Voibe is a dictation app, a program that turns speech into typed text. It uses Whisper, an open-source speech recognition model first released by OpenAI, which can run on the computer itself (on-device) so that the audio never leaves it. In zero-retention cloud mode, the audio is sent to a cloud provider that deletes it when the text is ready. The archived site of September 2025 sold it as a Mac app for developers and other heavy users of AI tools; in October 2026 the pricing page lists a free plan, Voibe Dictation at US$99 a year or US$199 once, and Voibe Work with meeting notes at US$149 a year or US$399 once.

The company is Essence AI Ltd, registered in England and Wales on 27 March 2025, which trades as Voibe and calls itself a Bristol-based AI startup. Its founder, who signs as Ayush on X and on the startup site Brag in Public, posted on 1 June 2026 "First $8k month for Voibe". On 25 July 2026 he posted that Voibe had passed US$800 of monthly recurring revenue (MRR, the subscription revenue of one month) and that "90%+ of our revenue is from LTDs", meaning lifetime deals, one-time payments for permanent access.

This page grades the story D, reported, not verified. The US$8,000 month rests on one short post that names no month, and the founder said that most of the money came from one-time sales that do not repeat. The subscription revenue that the founder reported in July 2026 was about one tenth of that month. The page also shows earlier voice companies that failed when the operating system makers gave the same function away.

## Pricing

Voibe prices per seat read on the pricing page on 27 October 2026, in US dollars (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voibe Free | 0 | 0 | dictation with limited words, one device |
| Voibe Dictation | 8.25 | 9.90 | unlimited dictation, Mac and Windows; or 199 one-time |
| Voibe Work | 12.42 | 19 | dictation plus meeting notes; or 399 one-time |
| Enterprise | custom | custom | more than 10 seats, team admin, BAA on request |

One seat is one person, on one Mac and one Windows PC. The yearly values are calculated per month (99 / 12 and 149 / 12). Lifetime seats are one-time payments, shown on the page as "Limited time", and include Cloud Mode and future updates of that plan. Every new account gets a 7-day trial of Voibe Work with no card, then moves to the free plan. Paid plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee. Lemon Squeezy is the merchant of record. More than 10 seats are sold on enterprise terms.

## How much revenue does Voibe make? The numbers, graded

A UK dictation app whose founder said it had its first US$8,000 month in June 2026, mostly from lifetime licences, with US$800 of monthly recurring revenue in July 2026

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue in a single month, reported 1 June 2026 | US$8,000 | D | Founder's post on X, read through Brag in Public: "First $8k month for Voibe". The post names no month; it was posted on 1 June 2026. Brag in Public labels the amount "MRR" and files the post under OutlierKit, the founder's other product, but the text names Voibe. | [2, 3] |
| Run rate from that month | US$96,000 a year | calc | Calculated: US$8,000 times 12. It is not a stable rate: the founder said in July 2026 that more than 90% of revenue came from one-time lifetime deals. | [2, 1] |
| Monthly recurring revenue, 25 July 2026 | more than US$800 | C | Founder's post, read through Brag in Public: "Just went past $800 MRR", "90%+ of our revenue is from LTDs, MRR is a small portion, but growing at a healthy pace now". | [1, 3] |
| Recurring share of an US$8,000 month | about 10% | calc | Calculated: 800 / 8,000 equals 0.10. This matches the founder's statement that more than 90% of revenue is from lifetime deals, but the two posts are seven weeks apart. | [1, 2] |
| Churn, July 2026 | 1% | C | Founder: "Plus churn is 1%". The period is not stated. | [1] |
| Usage claims, October 2026 | 20 million words spoken; more than 4,000 professionals | C | Home page: "20M words spoken. 6,000+ hours given back. Trusted by 4,000+ professionals". | [4] |
| Company | Essence AI Ltd, England and Wales, incorporated 27 March 2025 | B | Companies House overview: private limited company, active, software development. The privacy policy says Essence AI Ltd "trades as Voibe". | [12, 8] |
| Team | headcount not published | C | Jobs page: "a Bristol-based AI startup" and "You'll work directly with the founders in a small team that ships fast, on a live product with thousands of users". The roles listed were interns and a content creator; none was open on 27 October 2026. | [7] |
| First archived product page | 25 September 2025 | C | Wayback Machine: the domain redirected on 11 July 2025; the first full page, on 25 September 2025, sold a Mac app that "runs entirely on-device" for "AI power users". | [13] |
| Windows app | version 1.0.0, 18 July 2026 | C | Release notes. Voibe Work, with meeting notes, came to the Mac on 24 September 2026 (version 3.0.0) and to Windows on 6 October 2026. | [6] |
| Prices, October 2026 | Dictation US$9.90 a month, US$99 a year or US$199 once; Work US$19, US$149 or US$399 | C | Pricing page FAQ: "Voibe Dictation costs $9.90 per seat per month, $99 per seat per year, or $199 per seat once for lifetime access." | [5] |
| Security certification | none | C | Security page: "Voibe does not currently hold SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification." | [10] |
| Time from the first archived page to the US$8,000 month | 9 months | calc | Calculated: September 2025 to June 2026. | [13, 2] |

How to read this table: a grade D value is a founder statement in one post on X, read through Brag in Public, that no payment processor or second source confirms. A grade C value is another founder statement or a fact read on the company's own pages or in an archived copy. A grade B value comes from the UK company register. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A.

## When did Voibe launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a company registered in March 2025 to a first US$8,000 month in June 2026, as the founder reported it. Each entry carries its grade.

- **27 March 2025** (grade B [12]): Essence AI Ltd is incorporated in England and Wales; it later trades as Voibe.
- **25 September 2025** (grade C [13]): First full archived page: an on-device dictation app for the Mac, sold to developers and heavy users of AI tools, using OpenAI's Whisper models.
- **17 February 2026** (grade C [6]): Mac version 2.14.0, the oldest entry in the public release notes.
- **1 June 2026** (grade D [2, 3]): The founder posts "First $8k month for Voibe".
- **18 July 2026** (grade C [6, 1]): Voibe for Windows, version 1.0.0. Cloud dictation launches around the same time.
- **25 July 2026** (grade C [1]): The founder posts that MRR passed US$800, that more than 90% of revenue is from lifetime deals, that churn is 1%, and that organic traffic dipped after a Google update.
- **August 2026** (grade C [8, 9]): New terms and privacy policy, which cover a transcription API for developers.
- **24 September 2026** (grade C [6]): Voibe Work: meeting notes taken from the computer, with no bot in the call. The app reminds the user to tell the other people.
- **October 2026** (grade C [4, 5]): The site sells per-seat plans to legal, healthcare and finance teams and claims more than 4,000 professional users.

## Why did Voibe work?

### Privacy as the reason to switch

The first archived page said the voice "never leaves your Mac". The current page adds a cloud mode with providers that keep nothing and publishes each provider. That message moved the target market from developers to lawyers, clinicians and finance staff, for whom sending audio to an unknown server is a problem.

### Lifetime licences paid for the start

The founder posted in July 2026 that more than 90% of revenue came from lifetime deals and that MRR was a small part. A lifetime seat at a few hundred dollars brings cash at once, which funds a small team, but each month's revenue must come from new buyers. He wrote that the plan is to raise prices and eventually price out the lifetime deal.

### Search pages against named competitors

The site has comparison and "alternatives" pages for Wispr Flow, Dragon, Superwhisper, MacWhisper, Granola and others. The founder posted that organic traffic fell after a Google update and that he refreshed the content.

### Open models on fast inference

Speech is transcribed by Whisper Large Turbo on Groq or Cloudflare, and optional formatting is done by the open-weight GPT-OSS 120B model on Cerebras, the company's cloud page says. The company does not train a model; it chooses open models and providers and builds the app around them.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's cloud privacy, security, jobs and pricing pages and its release notes. They are grade C.

- A desktop app for macOS and Windows; an internship listing on the jobs page names "Swift, Rust, Tauri" as the stack. Mac releases are notarised by Apple.
- On-device dictation on Apple Silicon Macs with Whisper models; in cloud mode, Whisper Large Turbo on Groq or Cloudflare transcribes the audio and deletes it.
- Optional text formatting and API summaries by GPT-OSS 120B on Cerebras; speaker separation for the transcription API by pyannote.ai.
- Hosting and transactional email on Amazon Web Services; errors in Sentry; source code in private GitHub repositories.
- Payments through Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record; live chat through Crisp; analytics through Datafast, Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity; ad measurement for Google Ads, X, Reddit and OpenAI after cookie consent.
- A transcription API and an MCP server, so that Claude, ChatGPT and coding tools can send recordings and query meetings.

Sources: [11, 10, 7, 5, 6, 4]

## Who tried this before Voibe, and why did they fail?

Four companies in the Loot Drop database built voice input or a new way to enter text, and failed when the operating system and platform makers offered the same thing for free or bought the technology. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from Loot Drop (https://www.loot-drop.io/), a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Petalite (2014 to 2025; funding US$12M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A privacy-first voice assistant that runs locally on the device.
- Why it died: It sold hardware against Amazon and Google, who sold their speakers at or below cost.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/2471-petalite

### Tellme (1999 to 2011; funding US$238M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Information by voice command over the phone.
- Why it died: Smartphone apps with screens replaced voice menus, and Google and Amazon built better voice assistants.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/612-tellme

### VocalIQ (2011 to 2017; funding US$2M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Conversational voice interfaces that understand context.
- Why it died: Apple, Google and Amazon moved faster; Apple bought it in 2015 and folded it into Siri.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/719-vocaliq

### Whirlscape (2014 to 2017; funding US$500K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Minuum, a one-line keyboard that saves screen space.
- Why it died: The keyboards built into Android and iOS were good enough and deeply integrated, and users left the unfamiliar layout.
- Record: https://www.loot-drop.io/startup/1129-whirlscape

## What changed

The four predecessors needed their own speech or language technology, or their own hardware, and, according to the Loot Drop records, raised between US$500,000 and US$238 million for it; they could not keep pace with Apple, Google and Amazon, and they sold to consumers who already had a free option. Voibe uses open speech and language models that anyone can run, on the user's Mac or on rented fast inference, so a small team can match the quality of the big platforms' dictation.

Voibe also sells to a buyer that the free options do not serve well: professionals who must keep client text confidential and want to know where the audio goes. The risk is the same as before. Apple, Microsoft and Google can add better on-device dictation to the operating system at no charge, and the founder posted that most revenue so far came from lifetime deals that do not renew.

## Can one person copy Voibe now?

**Verdict: Partly: the build is easy to copy, the market is crowded.**

Wrapping an open speech model in a desktop app is now a small project, and many teams have done it, as the site's own list of competitors shows. What this story adds is a niche and a price structure: privacy for regulated professions, and lifetime licences to raise early cash, followed by a planned move to subscriptions. The second step, recurring revenue, was the part still unproven when the founder posted his figures.

1. Use an open model that can run on the user's machine, and make that the privacy promise.
2. Publish every cloud provider and what it keeps, so that a firm's IT team can approve the app.
3. Sell lifetime licences early only if you have a plan to move buyers to subscriptions.
4. Write comparison pages against each named competitor, and update them when search rankings change.
5. Add a second product, such as meeting notes, that justifies a higher per-seat price.

**What is still open.** Private, on-device versions of other cloud AI tools for regulated professions: document review, call summaries, translation and search over local files.

## What could go wrong for Voibe?

- **What is not verified.** The headline figure, a first US$8,000 month, rests on one post by the founder, Ayush, on X on 1 June 2026, read here through Brag in Public. The post has four words and an image that this page could not see, names no month, and Brag in Public files it under the founder's other product, OutlierKit, while the text names Voibe. No payment processor, buyer or interview confirms it. A reader could look for a Lemon Squeezy-verified profile on TrustMRR or a similar site, or a later founder post with monthly figures.
- **Most of the money was one-time.** The founder posted on 25 July 2026: "90%+ of our revenue is from LTDs, MRR is a small portion", with MRR just over US$800. Lifetime licences do not renew, so a strong month does not mean the next month will be similar. He wrote that he wants to "eventually price out the LTD and move all revenue to recurring".
- **Meeting notes with no bot in the call.** The release notes for Voibe Work say "Nobody has to admit a notetaker, and the people on the call see only you." The same release adds "A Reminder to Tell the Room", and the home page says "You're responsible for following the recording consent rules that apply to your meetings and your location." In places where all parties must agree to a recording, the user carries that duty.
- **The founder's other product.** The same founder runs OutlierKit, a tool that "scans thousands of competitor channels from a single seed" for YouTube research; he posted on 7 July 2026 that it had crossed US$3,000 MRR. Nothing on the Voibe pages read for this story sells or links to it.
- **Claims on the site that this page could not check.** The home page says Voibe is used by professionals at Westpac, PwC and Qonto and quotes a named attorney; the pricing page shows a calculator that estimates "$3,400 / month" saved from typing time and an hourly rate the visitor enters. These are the company's own statements and estimates. The security page says the company has no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification.

## Sources

1. Brag in Public: Voibe product page, with the founder's post of 25 July 2026 — https://braginpublic.com/products/voibe (grade C). Read in full in the copy downloaded on 27 October 2026 (the site allowed agents that day). Could not open the post on X (it needs a login); cited from Brag in Public's copy of https://x.com/ayushtweetshere/status/2080886574863003779. Source for the MRR, the lifetime-deal share, churn and the plans.
2. Brag in Public: OutlierKit product page, with the founder's post of 1 June 2026 — https://braginpublic.com/products/outlierkit (grade C). Read in full in the copy downloaded on 27 October 2026. Cited from Brag in Public's copy of https://x.com/ayushtweetshere/status/2061320091141288266, "First $8k month for Voibe". Also the source for OutlierKit.
3. Brag in Public: feed, copy of 27 October 2026 — https://braginpublic.com/feed (grade C). Read the Voibe and OutlierKit entries. Source for the exact posting times of both posts and for Brag in Public's labels.
4. Voibe home page, read 27 October 2026 — https://www.getvoibe.com/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the product, the usage claims, the customer claims and the recording-consent answer.
5. Voibe pricing page, read 27 October 2026 — https://www.getvoibe.com/pricing/ (grade C). Read in full, including the FAQ. Source for the plans, the lifetime prices, Lemon Squeezy and the savings calculator.
6. Voibe release notes — https://www.getvoibe.com/release-notes/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the release dates, the Windows app and Voibe Work.
7. Voibe jobs page — https://www.getvoibe.com/jobs/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the Bristol base, the small team and the app stack named in an internship listing.
8. Voibe Privacy Policy, last updated August 2026 — https://www.getvoibe.com/privacy/ (grade C). Read the sections on the company, on-device and cloud processing, and service providers.
9. Voibe Terms of Service, last updated August 2026 — https://www.getvoibe.com/terms/ (grade C). Read the sections on the company, payments and recording consent for the API.
10. Voibe Security page — https://www.getvoibe.com/security/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the subprocessors, hosting and certification status.
11. Voibe: How Cloud Mode handles your audio — https://www.getvoibe.com/cloud-ai-privacy/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the speech and formatting models and their providers.
12. Companies House: ESSENCE AI LTD (16349308) overview — https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/16349308 (grade B). Read the overview: status, type, incorporation date and business activity. The register's people and address are not used on this page.
13. Wayback Machine copy of getvoibe.com, 25 September 2025, and the capture list — https://web.archive.org/web/20250925134230/https://www.getvoibe.com/ (grade C). Read in full. The capture list (CDX) shows a redirect on 11 July 2025 and this first full page. Source for the early product and audience.
14. Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startups — https://www.loot-drop.io/ (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.