Pocket FM, an Indian audio storytelling platform, has seen its annualized revenue run rate double to $500 million over the past year, according to its co-founder and CEO, Rohan Nayak. This growth is largely due to the platform’s increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content creation. AI now produces 93% of Pocket FM’s overall catalog and is responsible for 99% of new content. While the platform still relies on human creators for story ideas and narrative direction, AI is used to generate the final content at scale. The company’s AI head, Vasu Sharma, a former scientist from Meta and Tesla, explained that they have trained their own AI models to handle tasks such as creative writing and text-to-speech, using data from years of content production and listener engagement. The shift to AI has dramatically cut content production costs, making the process about 80 times more efficient. According to Nayak, what once took a year to create—100 hours of content—can now be produced in a single day. This efficiency has also led to a significant increase in the volume of content. Pocket FM’s more than 550,000 creators are now producing about 2.5 million hours of AI-powered content annually. Two years ago, the startup’s entire catalog contained about 100,000 hours of content. Today, the platform has built a library of over 770,000 audio series. This surge in content has helped Pocket FM improve listener retention. The 12-month revenue retention rate has risen to 76%, up from 44% two years ago. The startup’s annualized revenue run rate was about $250 million a year ago, climbed to $430 million in April, and now stands at $500 million. Pocket FM calculates this figure by multiplying its monthly revenue by 12, rather than using contracted recurring revenue. The company has also expanded into new markets, including the U.K., Germany, and France, and launched user-generated content in the U.S. Some 96 titles on the platform have generated more than $1 million in revenue each, with 13 crossing $10 million. With over 250 million listeners in more than 20 countries, the U.S. market now accounts for about 70% of its revenue, despite growing only around 70% over the past year. About $85 million of Pocket FM’s revenue comes from ads, while the remaining $415 million is from users paying to unlock individual episodes. Pocket FM’s parent company, Pocket Entertainment, is now looking to expand its AI-driven content model beyond audio. Its new microdrama app, Pocket Saga, launched just three months ago, has already achieved an annualized revenue run rate of about $15 million. Unlike Pocket FM, where humans are still involved in developing stories, Pocket Saga uses entirely AI-produced content. The company is also using successful Pocket FM audio stories to generate AI-created videos for Pocket Saga, without any traditional live-action filming. Pocket Entertainment plans to expand further into other entertainment formats within the next five years and aims to turn its popular stories into books, TV shows, and movies through licensing deals. In addition to its growth, Pocket Entertainment is in discussions with investors about raising fresh capital. A recent report suggested the startup is seeking $100 million to $120 million at a valuation of about $2 billion. While Nayak did not confirm the talks, he said the company is not under immediate pressure to raise funds. The company is currently profitable and generating positive cash flow on an adjusted basis, though it has not disclosed specific profit figures or margins. A public listing is not on the immediate horizon, with Nayak stating that Pocket Entertainment does not plan to go public in the next 24 months. However, the company is keeping its options open for a future listing in either India or the U.S.