Pocket FM says revenue run rate reached $500 million as it uses more AI

In short: Pocket FM says its annualized revenue run rate has doubled to $500 million as AI now helps create most of its audio content.

What happened

Pocket FM, an Indian app for serialized audio stories, said its annualized revenue run rate reached $500 million over the past year. The company said the number was about $250 million a year ago. Pocket FM calculates this by taking one month of revenue and multiplying it by 12 (like estimating a yearly salary based on one month’s paycheck).

Pocket FM says artificial intelligence now powers 93% of its overall audio catalog and is used to produce 99% of its new content. The company says humans still come up with the story ideas and write the narratives, and AI is used to turn those ideas into finished audio at large scale.

Pocket FM says AI has made content production about 80 times cheaper. It also says 100 hours of content that used to take about a year to produce can now be made in a day.

The company says it has more than 250 million listeners in over 20 countries, and the US is now its largest market. Pocket FM said about $85 million of its annualized revenue comes from ads, and roughly $415 million comes from users paying to unlock individual episodes.

Why it matters

This shows how entertainment companies are using AI to make and release far more content, much faster, and at lower cost. For listeners, that can mean more stories to choose from, like a library that keeps adding new shelves every day. For creators and the industry, it raises questions about what parts of making a story stay human-led, and how AI-made content changes what gets produced and paid for.

Source: TechCrunch AI