{"id":461865,"date":"2026-05-22T14:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T14:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/461865\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T14:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T14:38:08","slug":"audio-generation-app-huxe-founded-by-former-notebooklm-developers-shuts-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/461865\/","title":{"rendered":"Audio generation app Huxe, founded by former NotebookLM developers, shuts down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.huxe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Huxe<\/a>, an app developed by former NotebookLM developers that let users put in a prompt and generate a podcast or a podcast series about a topic, is shutting down. The announcement comes a day after <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/21\/spotify-adds-ai-powered-qa-and-briefing-generation-features-to-podcasts\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Spotify released a personal podcast feature<\/a> that works similarly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company said that it is removing the app from App Store and Play Store, and if users already have the app installed, it will work for seven days. After that, the company will delete all data related to users. The startup didn\u2019t specify the reason behind the shutdown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019ve made the decision to wind down Huxe.\u00a0The team is moving on to new things, and we won\u2019t be continuing development of the product,\u201d according to an email sent to customers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The consumer AI market is highly competitive, as often core products of startups turn into commoditized features of large companies. Podcast creation for knowledge is on a similar trajectory. After NotebookLM popularized the feature, other big companies like <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/01\/21\/adobe-acrobat-now-lets-you-edit-files-using-prompts-generate-podcast-summaries\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Adobe<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/18\/amazons-new-alexa-powered-feature-can-generate-podcast-episodes\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon,<\/a> ElevenLabs, Meta, and now <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/05\/21\/spotify-adds-ai-powered-qa-and-briefing-generation-features-to-podcasts\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Spotify<\/a> emulated the feature in a way. Google also released <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/01\/09\/googles-daily-listen-ai-feature-generates-a-podcast-based-on-your-discover-feed\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a separate feature to create podcasts based on your Discover feed<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Huxe was started in late 2024 by former Google employees Raiza Martin, along with Jason Spielman and Stephen Hughes. The startup had raised $4.6 million in funding from Conviction, Genius Ventures, Figma CEO Dylan Field, and Google Research\u2019s chief scientist Jeff Dean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other startups, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/12\/10\/oboe-raises-16-million-from-a16z-for-its-ai-powered-course-generation-platform\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Achor co-founders and former Spotify execs\u2019 app Oboe<\/a>, and <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/sunapp.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sun<\/a>, which is part of an a16z speedrun cohort, are attempting to build an audience for audio-focused learning. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As AI models get better, they are able to convert one format to another, from text to audio, and audio to video. Companies that focus on only one kind of conversion modality for consumers might find it difficult to bring long-term usage and revenue to their apps. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because of AI, companies are shipping features fast and bringing their products to feature parity, which might affect some startups. In Huxe\u2019s case, generating a podcast about a topic became a commoditized feature in many apps and services. This could have proved difficult to scale the service to millions of users and have them pay for the app.<\/p>\n<p>When you purchase through links in our articles, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huxe, an app developed by former NotebookLM developers that let users put in a prompt and generate a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[199961,30334,199962,61,60,79626,80],"class_list":["post-461865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ai-audio","tag-conviction","tag-huxe","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-notebooklm","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}