Business · Companies · 2 hrs ago
Siri co-founder backs Helix’s voice-based identity technology
Helix is developing voice-based identity checks to help websites and services distinguish people from bots.
The startup was founded in 2025 by Alex Oberg, Anna Dorofiyenko and Mike Hall, and Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus has backed it and will advise the company.
Helix raised funding in a round led by Chicago Ventures, with the amount reported as $6 million by one account and $6.2 million by another.
Its technology can run on a user’s device to check whether someone is human and estimate their age, potentially offering an alternative to CAPTCHA or photo and video checks.
In-home healthcare provider Zeel uses Helix to verify the identities of providers visiting customers’ homes, and the company is exploring other uses, including checking for signs of distress.
Helix says its checks do not identify individual speakers, and its CEO says the technology cannot reliably detect lies or AI agents during live calls; pilots are also testing whether voice can indicate conditions such as drunkenness or distress.
Helix is developing voice-based identity technology that aims to verify whether users are human without requiring sensitive personal information.
Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus is backing the startup and will serve as an adviser.
Helix raised funding in a round led by Chicago Ventures, though reports differ on the amount.
The technology can run on users’ devices and can estimate whether someone is human and their age.
Helix says its technology is used by in-home healthcare provider Zeel to verify the identities of providers visiting customers.
- Who
- Helix, founded by Alex Oberg, Anna Dorofiyenko and Mike Hall; Dag Kittlaus is backing the startup and will advise it.
- What
- Helix is developing voice-based identity technology and raised funding in a round led by Chicago Ventures.
- When
- The startup was founded in 2025. The funding and Kittlaus’s backing were reported on November 11, 2026.
- Where
- The company is based in the United States, according to Tech in Asia.
- Why
- Helix aims to help verify human identity online without requiring users to share sensitive personal information.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Alex Oberg, Anna Dorofiyenko and Mike Hall founded Helix.
Reports said Helix raised funding in a round led by Chicago Ventures and that Dag Kittlaus would advise the company.
- Founders
- Alex Oberg, Anna Dorofiyenko and Mike Hall
- Founded
- 2025
- Funding
- $6 million according to TechCrunch; $6.2 million according to Bloomberg HT and Tech in Asia
- Lead investor
- Chicago Ventures
- Technology
- Can run locally on a device, including an iPhone 13, according to Helix
- Customer
- Zeel, an in-home healthcare provider
3 sources
What people are saying
As AI started to come up in the last two years, I was realizing that it’s going to make it increasingly difficult to determine who’s human and who’s not on the Internet. Identity on the Internet’s always been about proxies for identity, right? It’s your email, it’s your phone, it’s your IP address, it’s your device fingerprint, it’s your device ID
There’s like an avalanche of regulation coming down because essentially society has decided children should not be able to use the Internet as adults. That has created a bit of a strawman argument that everyone needs to trade their privacy for the sake of security and child safety. We are that company that’s saying, nope, don’t agree. It’s a four-second voice challenge