One of the most powerful use cases from modern AI models is the ability to better understand human speech, which has led to more accurate dictation tools. One such Mac tool, Willow, is launching an iOS app that allows users to voice input in all apps.
Like Wispr Flow, Willow’s keyboard transcribes your voice and formats your messages according to context. The app supports over 100 languages and lets you define your own vocabulary terms and create different writing styles across app categories like work, messaging, email, and more.
One of the main advantages of the Willow app is that a full keyboard is available for input, whereas Wispr Flow only provides a numeric keyboard. This helps you easily edit and change words and sentences instead of typing them. Plus, you don’t have to switch to a different keyboard when you want to type words instead of speaking them.
Willow was founded by Allan Guo and Lawrence Liu, who attended Stanford University but dropped out to launch a startup. They joined Y Combinator in the summer of 2024, along with other co-founders (who have now left the company). Their initial idea was to build software to manage healthcare, specifically nursing homes. But the idea didn’t stick, and for a year the company tried building different things.
“While working on a medical solution, I noticed that doctors had voice AI scribes that recorded conversations with patients and created follow-up documents. I had a lot of conversations with doctors, and they said these note takers were very useful for them. This inspired us to build voice AI tools for knowledge workers and other users,” Guo told TechCrunch over the phone.
Guo added that they decided not to build another AI note-taker because they felt the market was saturated. In fact, dictation spaces were more appealing because a lot of the communication happens outside of meetings. He said the company uses a suite of models and is focused on tuning a text-to-text pipeline based on Meta’s Llama model for formatting and personalization.
The startup then moved the YC batch to spring 2025 to launch the product. According to the company, the number of users has increased by 50% month-on-month since the service launched. Enterprise customers such as Uber, Heidi Health, and Zego also use tools for dictation with features such as custom team vocabularies.
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Willow has raised $4.5 million from angel investors including Box Group, Y Combinator, Burst Capital, and HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah. Gusto’s Tomer London. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. Kip Bodnar, former Yelp COO. Kaz Nejatian, CEO of Opendoor. Adam Guild, co-founder and CEO of Restaurant Software Company Owner; and Max Mullen, co-founder of Instacart.
Mullen said he believes the best user interfaces of the future will be voice-driven.
“I was really impressed by Alan’s vision to not only create a great dictation app, but in the long run to create an interface that can control computers,” he said. “When I’m writing with Willow, I have less editing to do than when I’m using a computer’s built-in dictation system.”
Mullen noted that one of his favorite workflows is being able to use the “Hey Willow” assistant on his desktop to tell the app to write things like email replies using his voice.
The startup competes with other players like Wispr Flow, which has raised more than $56 million in funding to date. Monologue is part of Every’s subscription bundle. and YC-backed startups Aqua, Talktastic, Superwisper, and Betterdication.
Guo said that in the coming months, the company plans to expand the platform on Windows and Android, as well as improve personalization to reduce the number of manual edits users have to make after dictation.
