An AI news app called Particle from ex-Twitter engineers can now keep up with news from podcasts as well as news posted on the web.
Just before its 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 places those clips alongside related news in its feed.
So instead of listening to a long podcast to catch 45 seconds of interesting commentary, you can play the clip while reading the news on Particle. You also have the option to read the transcript of the clip instead, as the words are highlighted as they are spoken.
“We’ve done this for basically any news story — if there’s a podcast that talks about it or is at all relevant, we have all these clips,” TechCrunch CEO Particle Sara Beykpour, formerly senior director of product management at Twitter, told TechCrunch. “It’s a really great way, when you’re reading a story or learning about a story, to breathe in what people are saying about it? What’s the commentary?”
The addition confirms a shift in the new ecosystem that has been underway for years. Not only are more and more people getting their news from podcasts and trusting them as reliable sources, but the medium is also becoming a destination for breaking news and major announcements from public figures.
Tech CEOs in particular are now looking to friendly podcast hosts to broadcast their discussion posts instead of trying to work with traditional media, as Bloomberg reported in 2024.
This makes paying attention to podcasts even more critical if you want to keep up with the news.
Beykpour says Particle uses embedding models to understand when podcasts are relevant to a given news story. These models are provided by the same companies that provide the LLM models, but they are not generative AI technologies, he explains.
“We use vector embedding to understand that these different parts of the podcasts relate to these different stories,” notes Beykpour. “One podcast can have 10 or 20 stories, so we use artificial intelligence to do that. We also use artificial intelligence to do some of the logic around trimming and understanding when to start a clip and when to stop.”
The company uses technology from ElevenLabs for transcription. However, some technology that identifies exactly where the audio is being clipped is part of Particle’s secret sauce.
The idea of using podcasts to better understand news commentary is also something newsrooms are looking into these days. As the Nieman Lab reported this month, The New York Times is using its own artificial intelligence tool that uses LLM 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 Podcast Clips feature isn’t just about news. Because the app already understands different entities—like people, places, or things—you can go to the page of a notable person like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to see all of his podcast appearances organized as a feed.
Particle has been busy building more features. The company made its first attempt at monetization with Particle+, an optional $2.99/month (or $29.99/year) subscription that gives you access to premium features. These include the ability to use natural language to summarize messages in the style you prefer; choosing from different voices when using a customized audio channel; “Listen to the news”; unlimited crossword puzzles; supporting private questions with an AI chatbot; and others.
The Android release also brings a few other notable changes. In addition to typical sections such as politics, technology or entertainment, the browse tab now includes current stories such as the 2026 Winter Olympics. In addition, when you tap on an entity, you will see a new page with definition, stories, articles, related entities and related topics.
Particle doesn’t share data on user activity or conversion rates, but Beykpour pointed to the app’s international audience, ahead of Android. On a weekly basis, 55% of Particle’s users are outside the US, with India (15%) being its largest market after the US.