Nylas launches fastest-adopted product in company history with AssemblyAI
Nylas, a leading developer API platform, chose integration over building in-house and integrated meeting intelligence capabilities in less than a day with AssemblyAI. Thousands of developers globally can now add meeting intelligence to their applications with a single line of code.
savings in engineering costs
usage growth in three months
reduction in STT processing times
The build-versus-buy inflection point
The meeting intelligence market has reached a critical juncture. Research from Nylas' 2025 State of Meeting Recording report reveals that 67% of SaaS users would switch to competitors within 6 months for better integrated meeting features. For Nylas, a company powering communications APIs for developers worldwide, this market shift presented both opportunity and urgency.
"We needed to launch a new product, Notetaker, that could record, transcribe, and analyze meetings at scale," explains Nick Barraclough, Product Manager at Nylas. "The challenge was deciding whether to build transcription capabilities ourselves or buy from a partner."
The build scenario was daunting: 4-6 engineers dedicated for 6+ months, specialized automatic speech recognition (ASR) expertise the team didn't possess, and resources diverted from critical areas like calendar sync and platform reliability. Most critically, any delay would forfeit first-mover advantage in a market where 41% of companies were already actively building AI-powered meeting features.
Without transcription capabilities, Notetaker wasn't viable. Relying on lower-quality built-in options from meeting platforms would create churn risk and poor adoption due to inaccuracies, especially in multi-speaker meetings where accurate speaker attribution is critical. The business case was clear: launch delays would limit Nylas' ability to capture early customer demand in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Evaluating the transcription landscape
Nylas conducted a thorough evaluation of the market, considering self-hosted Whisper models, third-party vendor Gladia, and native provider transcripts from Google and Microsoft with potential LLM enrichment layers.
The evaluation team, led by Product and Engineering, established clear decision criteria:
- Technical requirements: High transcription accuracy with strong speaker diarization capabilities, processing speed measured in seconds rather than minutes, and seamless API integration with excellent documentation.
- Business considerations: Balanced pricing versus performance, vendor reputation with demonstrated roadmap velocity, and responsive support infrastructure.
- Strategic factors: A partner that displayed rapid innovation, rather than a static solution, and the ability to scale globally without geographic limitations.
For Nylas, choosing a partner that ships continuous improvements was critical in a market where AI capabilities advance weekly. AssemblyAI emerged as the clear choice.
Rapid deployment, enterprise-grade capabilities
Nylas built their MVP in less than a day with a single developer. This was a stark contrast to the 6-month, multi-engineer build they had initially considered. The integration architecture is elegantly simple: developers add a Notetaker to meetings with one line of code, recordings are automatically transcribed with speaker labels, and results are delivered via webhooks or API calls for embedding in CRMs, triggering workflows, or archiving.
AssemblyAI's capabilities proved essential for delivering meeting intelligence at scale:
- Accurate transcription and diarization: Critical for multi-speaker calls where speaker attribution directly impacts downstream analysis and user experience.
- Automatic language detection: Essential for Nylas' global customer base, eliminating manual configuration and enabling seamless international expansion.
- Low-latency processing: Transcripts delivered in under 2 minutes rather than the 20-30 minute processing times of alternatives, keeping Nylas' service level agreements safe and customer satisfaction high.
- Scalability and reliability: The infrastructure handled 20x usage growth over three months with no degradation in performance or service incidents.
- Developer experience: Comprehensive documentation and support infrastructure reduced developer overhead and accelerated time-to-value.
"Support through a shared Slack channel was extremely fast and responsive," Barraclough explains. "In practice, we rarely needed to raise issues thanks to AssemblyAI's documentation, which was thorough and developer-friendly."
Quantifiable business transformation
The results speak to both technical excellence and business impact across multiple dimensions:
Performance metrics:
- Transcripts consistently delivered in under 2 minutes compared to 20-30 minutes with alternatives
- Zero incidents tied to transcription quality or availability
- Successfully scaled 20x in three months without performance degradation
Financial impact:
- Avoided approximately $300K+ in engineering investment and ongoing model training costs
- Achieved positive ROI within the first week of integration
- Over 100% ROI in the first quarter
Time-to-market advantage:
- Launched Notetaker approximately 6 months faster than a build scenario
- Captured early market demand before alternatives could emerge
- Established competitive positioning in a rapidly evolving market
Operational efficiency:
- Engineering resources remained focused on core differentiators like calendar sync and platform reliability
- Transcription layer introduced no SLA risks
- Maintained Nylas' reputation for reliability
Customer impact and market adoption
Notetaker became the fastest-adopted product in Nylas' history. The product now serves developers globally and is core to a global suite of products with millions of users.
Customer feedback highlights the immediate value creation. Users receive accurate transcripts, summaries, and action items within minutes, enabling deeper integrations into CRMs, workflows, and analytics platforms. Customers have specifically praised how quickly transcripts and summaries become available after meetings, enabling smoother workflows and immediate follow-up actions.
The adoption rate has exceeded any previous Nylas product launch, demonstrating product-market fit and customer value.
Internal adoption proved equally impressive. Nylas used Notetaker on every internal call during development, accelerating testing and stability far faster than any previous launch. This dogfooding approach surfaced edge cases early and validated the product-market fit before general availability.
"The most surprising or unexpected benefit we experienced was internal adoption and dogfooding—our team used Notetaker heavily from day one, accelerating quality and stability far faster than any previous launch," notes Barraclough.
Nylas' experience validates key findings from their State of Meeting Recording 2025 report. The research shows that 78% of SaaS users want AI capabilities beyond basic automation, with 45% expecting real-time meeting assistance and 33% demanding autonomous workflows. Meeting recording and transcription alone no longer suffice. Companies must build AI features that transform data into actionable intelligence.
Building for the future of conversational AI
Nylas continues expanding their meeting intelligence capabilities with AssemblyAI as a foundational partner. The company is exploring live transcription and real-time translation for multilingual use cases. These capabilities will enable developers to build even more sophisticated conversational AI applications.
Nylas' experience offers actionable insights for companies evaluating build-versus-buy decisions for AI capabilities:
- Speed matters more than ever: In rapidly evolving markets, 6 months of development time represents significant competitive disadvantage. API integration enabled Nylas to launch in days rather than quarters.
- Focus on differentiation: Engineering resources should concentrate on unique value propositions rather than commoditized capabilities. Transcription quality alone doesn't differentiate. What matters is what you build on top of it.
- Vendor selection criteria: Beyond technical performance, evaluate vendor innovation velocity, documentation quality, and support responsiveness. These factors directly impact development speed and ongoing maintenance costs.
- Internal adoption accelerates validation: Dogfooding products during development surfaces issues early and validates market fit before general availability, reducing risk and accelerating time-to-market.
For developers and product leaders considering similar investments, Barraclough offers clear guidance: "If you're weighing build vs. buy for transcription, AssemblyAI makes the decision easy. The speed, accuracy, and support are unmatched."
Start building what's next
Top Voice AI companies rely on AssemblyAI’s speech-to-text and speech understanding models to launch groundbreaking products fast and scale with ease.
A partnership built on support and scale
Calabrio
Leading workforce and conversation intelligence provider leaps from legacy on-premise solution, boosts customer satisfaction by 80%, and accelerates global expansion.
Turn voice data into unparalleled product experiences
Partner with the leader in Speech AI to build powerful products with breakthrough industry impact.
