Siri co-founder backs Helix for its voice ID tech

Summary

• Helix is a startup founded in 2025 by Alex Oberg, Anna Dorofiyenko, & Mike Hall that uses voice technology to verify human identity without requiring sensitive personal information.
• The company raised $6 million in funding led by Chicago Ventures, with participation from BAM Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, Corazon Capital, Tusk Ventures, Yonder Ventures, Rule30, & Brown Alumni Group.
• Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus provided backing & will serve as an advisor to the company.
• Helix's core technology runs directly on user devices to determine if someone is human & estimate their age.
• The startup is piloting the use of voice as a biomarker to detect conditions such as drunkenness or distress.
• Helix aims to replace or supplement CAPTCHA to block bot attacks, with a customer being Zeel, an in-home healthcare provider.
• The company is exploring use cases for verifying workers like cab drivers & offering an alternative to age-verification regulations that force users to trade privacy for access.
• CEO Alex Oberg stated the technology cannot reliably detect lying, does not identify individual speakers, & cannot reconstruct a person's voice from stored voiceprints.
• Helix acknowledged its technology is not yet capable of reliably detecting AI agents during live calls.
• Dag Kittlaus noted that voice identification technology has reached a point of reliability & that model compression gives the startup a cost advantage.