Call an AI news app Particleby ex-Twitter engineers, can now track news on podcasts as well as news published on the web.
Shortly before its recent Android launch, Particle introduced a feature called Podcast Clips, which finds the most interesting and relevant moments in many different types of podcasts and then includes those clips along with related news in its feed.
So instead of listening to a lengthy podcast just to catch 45 seconds of interesting commentary, you can play the clip as you read the news on Particle. You also have the option to read the transcript of the clip, as the words are highlighted as they are spoken.
“We’ve done this for basically any news story — if there’s a podcast talking about it or related to it, we’ve got all those clips,” CEO Particle said. Sara Beykpourpreviously Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter, told TechCrunch. “It’s a really great way, when you’re reading a story or learning about a story, to get a breath of what people are saying about it? What’s the commentary?”
The addition recognizes a shift in the news ecosystem that has been underway for years. Not only are there more people they get their news from podcasts and to trust them as reliable sources, but the medium is also to become a destination for breaking news and important announcements from public figures.
Tech CEOs, in particular, are now looking to friendly podcast hosts to air their talking points instead of trying to work with traditional media, as Bloomberg reported in 2024.
This makes paying attention to podcasts even more critical if you want to keep up with the news.
Beykpour says he uses particles integration models to understand when podcasts are relevant to a given news story. These models are provided by the same companies that provide LLM models, but they are not generative AI technologies, he explains.
“We use vector embeddings to understand that these different parts of the podcasts relate to these different stories,” notes Beykpour. “A single podcast might cover 10 or 20 stories, so we use AI to figure that out. We also use AI to do some of the logic around the clip and understand when to start a clip and end a clip.”
The company leverages technology from ElevenLabs for transcription. However, some of the technology that determines exactly where the audio will cut off is part of Particle’s secret sauce.
The idea of leveraging podcasts to better understand commentary around news is also something newsrooms are looking more closely at these days. As Nieman Lab reported this month, the New York Times used a custom AI tool that uses LLM to transcribe and summarize new episodes of dozens of right-wing and more conservative podcasts to better understand what influencers on that side are saying about the news.
Particle’s Podcast Clips feature isn’t just about news. Because the app already understands different entities — like people, places, or things — you can go to the page for a notable figure, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to see all of their podcast appearances neatly as a stream.
Particle has been busy building other features as well. The company made its first foray into monetization with Particle+, an optional $2.99/month (or $29.99/year) subscription that lets you access premium features. These include the ability to use natural language to summarize news in your preferred style. choose from different voices when using the personalized audio stream. “Listen to the news”; unlimited crosswords. support for private questions with AI chatbot. and more.
The Android version also brings some other notable changes. The browse tab now includes current stories, such as the 2026 Winter Olympics, in addition to standard sections such as politics, technology or entertainment. Additionally, when you tap on an entity, you’ll see a new page with the definition, stories, articles, related entities, and related topics.
Particle doesn’t share data about user activity or conversion rates, but Beykpour pointed to the app’s international audience, pre-Android. On a weekly basis, 55% of Particle users are outside the US, with India (15%) the largest market after the US
