AI Podcast App Huxe Shuts Down One Day After Spotify Launched a Similar Feature

Huxe, an app that let users generate podcasts or podcast series from a text prompt, is shutting down. The company announced in May 2026 that it is removing the app from the App Store and Google Play Store. Users who already have the app installed will have seven days of access before the service goes offline and all user data is deleted.

“We’ve made the decision to wind down Huxe. The team is moving on to new things, and we won’t be continuing development of the product,” the company said in an email to customers. The startup did not specify a reason for the closure.

The announcement came one day after Spotify released a personal podcast feature that works similarly to Huxe’s core product. Huxe was founded in late 2024 by former Google employees Raiza Martin, Jason Spielman, and Stephen Hughes — all previously involved with Google’s NotebookLM. The startup had raised $4.6 million in funding from investors including Conviction, Genius Ventures, Figma CEO Dylan Field, and Google Research chief scientist Jeff Dean.

The shutdown reflects a broader pattern in the consumer AI market, where features developed by startups can quickly become standard offerings from larger companies. After NotebookLM popularized AI-generated audio summaries, companies including Adobe, Amazon, ElevenLabs, Meta, Spotify, and Google have each introduced similar capabilities. Google also released a separate feature to create podcasts based on a user’s Discover feed.

As more platforms absorb podcast generation as a built-in feature, startups focused solely on that capability may find it difficult to grow a paying user base at scale. Other audio-focused startups, including Oboe — founded by Anchor co-founders and former Spotify executives — and Sun, part of an a16z speedrun cohort, are still attempting to build audiences around audio-based learning.