Goodnotes collaborative docs and AI assitant to cater to professional users | TechCrunch

Notetaking app Goodnotes, which historically catered to users in the classroom, is launching new features today geared towards professionals. These include a new collaborative whiteboard tool, the ability to create documents, and an AI assistant to help users summarize and create content.

The Goodnotes AI can work with various input methods, including handwriting, typing, sketches, and voice. The company said that the assistant can summarize meetings, create visuals like charts and diagrams, proofread text, and create templates for documents and note-taking.

Last year, the company acquired a South Korean startup working on meeting and video summaries. Goodnotes is now using tech from that acquisition to power some of these new features.

Alongside AI, the company is launching a whiteboard feature to let users collaborate on a blank canvas using text and diagrams. The startup is also adding a way for users to create documents with text, images, GIFs, and tables.

Goodnotes is not alone in integrating documents into its platform. Productivity platforms like Grammarly and Canva are nudging users to create more documents within their apps. This also creates more context for their AI assistants to answer users’ queries.

“We still have a large user base of students, but we want to expand our product to become useful for everyone, especially professionals. Text documents are popular in offices for people who type a lot, and a whiteboard is great for collaboration using different tools. Going forward, we want to be a well-rounded notetaking app for every scenario and every device,” GoodNotes founder Steven Chen told TechCrunch over a call.

The company is debuting two new plans called Goodnotes Essentials and Goodnotes Pro — replacing its numbering system. Essentials costs $11.99 per year and includes access to new file formats, AI for Q&A, and math. Pro costs $35.99 per year, and includes integration with Google Calendar and OneDrive, private link sharing and collaboration, a desktop AI bot to record and transcribe meetings, and AI-powered content suggestions.

The startup said that there is a limit to how much AI users can use, even on the Pro plan. It also sells an AI pass for $10 per month to get unlimited AI credits.

The company still offers a one-time purchase option for Apple device users, that is $35.99 but comes without cloud sync or cross-platform support.

Goodnotes started as an iPad app in 2011, but over the years, it has added support for iOS, Android, and Windows. The startup said that it has than 25 million monthly active users, up from 21 million in 2023.