To thrive in the current uncertain macroeconomic environment paired with unprecedented technological advancement, organisations of all sizes and across industries, are required to work more efficiently with leaner teams. Now, probably more than ever, it is essential to invest in workforce development and optimisation, to strengthen the employer and employee relationship, boost employee engagement, and ensure a successful long-term collaboration.

This is why we are excited to back Koios, a UK-based voice-driven AI platform set to drastically reduce cost and friction in the personality and management insights market, empowering human understanding between employers and employees. What makes this partnership even more remarkable is that the company was co-founded by our alumnus Alex Lewis, who in his role as Head of Talent, led our talent initiatives and supported our portfolio companies from 2021 until earlier this year.

On a mission to fundamentally improve the way that organisations work with their talent, Koios leverages proprietary voice-driven AI algorithms, to provide low friction and cost-efficient personality insights, thus enabling managers and teams to work together more effectively. Aiming to provide talent leaders and organisations with bespoke ways to communicate, motivate and develop each employee, the company is developing and applying state-of-the-art audio deep learning models using original data collection with an emphasis on a conscientious and ethical approach. To ensure the inclusivity of all people, regardless of race, gender, or geographical origin, Koios acquires original training data.

Started in 2020 by Alex, alongside his friend Tom Sherwood, Koios is rooted in the first-hand pain of lacking tech solutions to support managers and teams the founders have experienced as talent leaders themselves.

Alex Lewis, COO comments:

“In our roles at Spotify, and Seedcamp respectively, Tom and I had been helping companies across the Big Tech, start-up, and the scale-up world for years and one of the biggest buzzwords and blockers to hiring at the time was “culture fit”, which we despised as it had connotations of an individual having to “fit in” rather than a company enabling the success of each employee. As managers and leaders, we’d been through personality assessments over the years and we recognised that there were some useful insights in the more “robust” assessments, and questioned why there wasn’t greater adoption across the industry below leadership level (93% of the market wasn’t being served). After speaking with industry leaders, they made it clear that if friction from self-assessment could be removed and a more cost-effective model be put in place, then there was a great opportunity for mass adoption. 

With the addition of Martin Lukac, as Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist, Koios developed its proprietary technology to understand personality using voice. Designed as an enablement tool, Talent/Recruiting/HR teams can easily run the Koios app inviting existing employees to partake or sit over existing candidate interview processes. A minimum of 90 seconds is required to provide a bespoke set of personality and management insights from a candidate or employee’s voice to ensure their success in their role.

Lewis adds: “Not only can we provide existing workforce analysis, we will be able to run Koios over the top of an interview process at the click of a button and provide insights from 90 seconds, without the need to change the process or for the candidate or employee to do anything other than consent, of course. We are very conscious to eliminate as much of the bias as possible in the algorithms/models, so we spend a lot of time manually gathering and curating our training data to ensure that our tool serves everyone, regardless of their demographic — be it gender, ethnic background, or accent — so we can provide fair and inclusive insights to be used to lead, manage and develop employees, categorically not to assess their suitability for a role.”

On why we backed Koios, our Managing Partner Carlos Espinal MBE, emphasises: “Koios brings much-needed innovation in the talent development industry, particularly in the tech sector. Having worked closely together with Alex in his previous role as Seedcamp’s Head of Talent, I’ve admired his dedication and passion for nurturing talent across our portfolio and empowering them to thrive. Leveraging voice-driven AI, the platform helps find a better fit between employers and employees, thus facilitating a successful and productive, long-term collaboration. We couldn’t be more excited to back such an exceptional team on their mission to enable employees to reach their full potential and leaders and organisations to develop their workforce effectively.”

We are thrilled to lead Koios’s $550k Pre-Seed funding round, alongside Evolvient Capital and industry angels. With the new funding, Koios aims to prepare its go-live and continue investing in inclusive training data and developing the platform. Talent leaders and organisations can get early access to the platform on the company’s website getkoios.ai.

    

The proliferation of new AI technologies is pushing organisations of all sizes and across industries and verticals to adopt and develop AI solutions at an exponential rate. However, in an expanding regulatory environment and a market climate where consumers believe that organisations should bear responsibility for any misapplication of AI technology, leaders need to prioritise AI governance to fully benefit from the power of AI innovation. Even more so businesses in domains that are inherently risky, such as financial services, healthcare, and insurance, need to understand, manage, and comply with AI-related risks and regulations.

This is why we are excited to back Enzai, a Belfast-based AI governance startup providing organisations with a comprehensive toolkit to navigate these complexities, ensuring the responsible development, deployment, and usage of AI. Coming at a pivotal moment, the company’s mission is to ensure that powerful AI technologies can gain the level of trust necessary to fulfill their true potential.

Founded in 2021 by Ryan Donnelly, a leading lawyer in the AI regulation space, and Jack Carlisle, a software engineer with extensive startup experience, Enzai brings a unique combination of legal, engineering, and data science expertise to build a solution in this area. The team of expert lawyers is tracking AI-focused regulatory developments around the world and responding quickly with new frameworks and features to ensure their customers can stay one step ahead.

Ryan Donnelly, co-founder of Enzai, comments:

“We founded Enzai with a clear vision: to empower organisations to harness the incredible potential of AI, while minimising the risks involved. As AI continues to evolve and permeate every industry, ensuring that it is built and adopted in a responsible, compliant manner has never been more critical. This financing fuels our commitment to enable businesses to innovate in AI with confidence, whilst safeguarding against potential pitfalls, and it paves the way for a future where AI drives both progress and responsibility.”

Enzai enables organisations to build up an inventory of their AI solutions, apply policies and procedures to that AI, and then measure compliance in real-time. “Controls”, the platform’s new feature introduces a new paradigm for building and using AI, allowing cross-functional teams to collaborate and conduct assessments of AI systems.

Jack Carlisle, co-founder of Enza adds:

“(…) we ensure consistency and scalability, enabling organisations of all sizes to manage their AI governance efforts efficiently. It facilitates seamless collaboration between business, legal and technical teams, bridging the gap between domain-specific, regulatory and data science expertise.”

Enzai’s software solution applies across industry verticals, in particular to financial services, healthcare, insurance, HR, and government. Ryan Donnelly emphasises: “anyone that takes their civic and regulatory responsibilities seriously can benefit from AI governance, and our software makes it extremely easy to get going.” 

On why we invested in Enzai, our Partner Tom Wilson, comments:

“We are all dealing with this incredibly powerful new wave of AI technologies. At the current rate of development, it is critical that we find ways to harness this development so that it has a positive impact on the world. We’re thrilled to support Enzai as one of the first investments from our new Fund VI. The team behind Enzai have identified a really strong way of managing AI risk, and their tech is set to be a foundational part of the AI ecosystem.”

We are excited to participate in Enzai’s $4 million seed funding round led by Cavalry Ventures, alongside existing pre-seed investor, Techstart Ventures and leading angel investors including Paul Forster (founder of Indeed.com), Sam Gill (co-founder of Seedcamp-backed Sylvera), and Alexandre Berriche (founder of Fleet). Enzai will use the funding to build out its engineering capabilities and support its go-to-market efforts.

Enzai is “in hiring mode”, with open roles across engineering, operations, policy, sales, and marketing. Check them out and apply here.

For more information, visit enz.ai.