Huxe app, created by NotebookLM founders, is shutting down

Huxe, an app founded by former NotebookLM developers that generates podcasts and podcast series based on user prompts, is shutting down. This decision was announced one day after Spotify introduced a similar personal podcast feature. The company stated it would remove the app from the App Store and Play Store, and that installed apps will continue to function for another seven days. This was reported by Techcrunch.com .

In a message to customers, the Huxe team stated they decided to discontinue the project and will pursue new directions, though specific reasons for the closure were not disclosed. The consumer AI market is highly competitive, and often, the core products of startups become simple features for large companies. After NotebookLM popularized this trend, giants like Adobe, Amazon, ElevenLabs, Meta, and Spotify integrated similar capabilities into their platforms.

Huxe was founded in late 2024 by former Google employees Raiza Martin, Jason Spielman, and Stephen Hughes. The startup had raised $4.6 million from investors including Conviction, Genius Ventures, Figma CEO Dylan Field, and Google Research Chief Scientist Jeff Dean. Currently, other startups like Oboe and Sun are also trying to find their audience in the audio-education sector.

As artificial intelligence models evolve, they easily convert information from one format to another, such as text to audio or audio to video. For companies dealing with only one type of conversion, maintaining long-term revenue and a user base is becoming difficult. In Huxe's case, the fact that generating a podcast on a topic became a standard feature for many services hindered the startup's expansion.