This AI Search Engine Can Find Anything Said in Podcasts

Particle, the AI startup founded by former Twitter engineers, is pivoting its focus to podcast intelligence with the introduction of Radar, a search engine capable of making spoken conversations within podcasts searchable. Radar does more than transcribe audio; it analyzes discussions to identify key quotes, highlights, individuals, companies, brands, products, and topics.

Notably, hedge funds are among the largest customers, directly integrating Radar through its API. Journalists, researchers, AI search platforms, and data resellers also utilize the service, which was initially developed for Particle's newsreader app. Particle recognized the potential of this technology as a standalone product as AI agents gained popularity.

The company now offers an API that grants AI agents and businesses access to the audio intelligence contained in podcasts. Currently, Radar transcribes over 130,000 podcasts, making it the largest transcribed podcast service available. Its database covers all Apple Top 200 podcasts across 135 categories, with around 20,000 new episodes added daily.

Each transcript includes speaker labels and detailed metadata, and users can track specific entities to receive alerts when they are mentioned, either immediately or via email, Slack, or webhooks. Users can also apply filters to receive notifications based on specific guests, topics, or top podcasts. Radar can extract relevant standalone clips with timestamps, allowing users to either listen to the audio or read the content.

The platform preselects notable clips for users who do not wish to listen to the entire podcast or read a full summary. Furthermore, Radar can track topics, mentions, listener ratings and reviews, episode advertisements, and other podcast data. A dedicated podcast advertising search engine is also included to track company advertisements and monitor their appearances over time.

Particle sees potential in expanding Radar's capabilities to other forms of audio and video, such as YouTube videos and news clips. Pricing starts at $29 per month per seat for the web interface, with a business plan available for $399 per month for 20 seats. API pricing is customized based on customer requirements. Particle plans to expand Radar beyond podcasts as AI agents become more prevalent.