Finnish independent media startup Kieku Labs has taken its total funding to €700K on its mission to bring talk audio with radio-like simplicity back as everyday media content. The majority of the funding has been raised from Swedish serial entrepreneurs Gert Nordin and Erik Fischbeck, backed by Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation.
The Helsinki-based startup was founded in 2015. The new service that Kieku offers will help make your listening experience more interesting and meaningful. The goal of the founders is to make it easy to find new influencers and experts in your personal areas of interest.
Kieku, which was recently ranked as the hottest startup in August in Finland by Startup100, is available worldwide on kieku.com, and as an iOS app currently in most of the European countries and the US.
Erik Fischbeck, the Kieku Labs board member and investor stated: “The AI core engine of the Kieku service, in combination with the unique and precise social sharing functionality, will fill a gap in the podcast domain not yet served by other audio services. The global expansion is planned to continue in 2018, and we are also open for new potential investors to join in.”
Kieku offers the easiest way to listen to content that is selectively curated for your personal taste. By registering and pushing play, the unique AI engine begins to learn your listening behavior and offers audio content that matches your interests. In addition, users have the option to add their favorite content to their personal collection with RSS-feeds.
Tomi Halonen, the chairman of Kieku Labs concludes: “Sound is an original media. Good stories have always been an important part of human life, and will continue to be in the future. Thanks to the radio and other electronic media, the spoken narrative is vivid and accessible for mass audiences. I believe Kieku shows us the future of digital voices: both in terms of listening to them and creating them. Kieku will be the essential tool for audio lovers globally as the automatized, personalized, and socially shared channel for the voices of the world.”
