Called an AI news app Particleof former Twitter engineers, can now follow the latest news on podcasts and news published on the Internet.
Just ahead of the recent Android release, Particle introduced a feature called Podcast Clips, which finds the most interesting and relevant moments in many different types of podcasts and then includes these clips in the feed along with the related news stories.
So instead of listening to a long podcast just to catch the 45 seconds of interesting comments, you can play the clip while you read the news on Particle. You also have the option of reading the transcript of the clip instead, as the words are highlighted as they are spoken.
“We’ve basically done that for every news story – if there’s a podcast that talks about it, or is relevant at all, we have all those clips,” says Particle CEO Sara Beykpourpreviously Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter, told TechCrunch. “It’s a really cool way, when you’re reading a story or learning about a story, to get a sense 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 get their news from podcasts and to trust them as reliable sources, but so is the medium become a destination for the latest news and important announcements from public figures.
Tech CEOs in particular are now looking for friendly podcast hosts to advance their talking points instead of trying to work with traditional media. Bloomberg reports this in 2024.
That makes paying attention to podcasts even more important if you want to stay up to date with the news.
Beykpour says particles are used embed models to understand when podcasts are related to a particular news story. These models are provided by the same companies that provide LLM models, but they are not generative AI technologies, she explains.
“We use vector embeddings to understand that these different parts of the podcasts relate to these different stories,” Beykpour notes. “A single podcast might span ten or twenty stories, so we use AI to understand that. We also use AI to do some of the logic around cutting, and to understand when a clip should start and end.”
The company uses technology from ElevenLabs for transcription. However, some of the technology that determines where exactly the audio should be recorded is part of Particle’s secret sauce.
The idea of using podcasts to better understand commentary around news is also something newsrooms are looking at more closely these days. If Nieman Lab reports this this month, The New York Times deployed a custom AI tool that uses LLMs 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 Podcasts Clips feature isn’t just tied to news stories. Since 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 his podcast appearances, arranged as a feed.
Particle has also been busy building other features. The company has made its first foray into monetization with Particle+, an optional $2.99 per month (or $29.99 per year) subscription that gives you access to premium features. These include the ability to: use natural language to summarize the news in the style you prefer; choose from different voices when using the personalized audio feed; “Listen to the news”; unlimited crossword puzzles; support for private questions with its AI chatbot, and more.
The Android release also brings a number of other notable changes. The browsing tab now includes current stories, such as the 2026 Winter Olympics, in addition to typical sections such as politics, technology or entertainment. Additionally, when you tap on an entity, you will see a new page with its definition, stories, articles, related entities, and related topics.
Particle doesn’t share data on user activity or conversion rates, but Beykpour did point out the app’s international audience, pre-Android. On a weekly basis, 55% of Particle’s users are outside the US, with India (15%) being the second largest market after the US
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