Pocket FM doubles revenue run rate to $500M as AI powers 93% of its catalog

Pocket FM co-founder and CEO Rohan Nayak said in an interview with TechCrunch that the Indian audio storytelling platform has doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500 million in the 12 months through September 2026, driven largely by the growing use of AI in content production.

AI now powers 93% of Pocket FM’s overall catalog and is used to produce 99% of its new content, Nayak said. The technology has made content production about 80 times cheaper, cutting the time needed to produce 100 hours of content from roughly a year to a single day. The company’s more than 550,000 creators now produce about 2.5 million hours of AI-powered content annually.

Founded in 2018, Pocket FM has built a library of more than 770,000 audio series and now serves over 250 million listeners across more than 20 countries. The U.S., its largest market, accounts for about 70% of its annualized revenue run rate and grew about 70% in the 12 months through September 2026. The company's 12-month revenue retention rate has risen to 76% from 44% in 2024, helped in part by a larger catalog that better matches listener preferences.

Of the $500 million run rate, about $85 million comes from ads and roughly $415 million from users paying to unlock episodes. Nayak stressed that human creators remain essential to building IP that lasts, with Pocket FM building AI tools around the creative process rather than generating content autonomously. AI head Vasu Sharma said the startup trained its own models for tasks such as creative writing and text-to-speech using years of production data and listener engagement signals. The company's annualized revenue run rate was about $250 million in 2025, reached $430 million in April 2026, and now stands at $500 million.