London-based OriginalVoices, a real-time human insight platform for AI, has successfully closed a £1 million pre-seed funding round led by venture capital firm Iona Star. The funding will be used to scale the team, expand the digital twin network, and grow the company’s presence in the US market.
The decision to invest in OriginalVoices comes after the company has shown successful growth momentum and established partnerships with trusted brands such as YouGov. Iona Star brings deep expertise in cross-market data strategy, having recently backed Yann LeCun’s startup AMI Labs and led the round in AI training data company Worldmodeldata.
David Dobrin, Co-Founder and CEO of OriginalVoices, expressed his gratitude for Iona Star’s understanding of the company’s space and its role as an extension of their team. He highlighted the importance of human insight in AI decision-making and outputs, and stated that OriginalVoices provides this through its real-time data on human perspective and audience understanding.
Partner at Iona Star, Kevin McGivern, shared his thoughts on the current limitation of AI effectiveness, stating that the quality of data is the key factor. He believes that OriginalVoices’ human insight layer is a structural advantage and looks forward to supporting the company’s development.
OriginalVoices has built a network of tens of thousands of digital twins, each owned and trained by a real person, through its consumer app Twineo. This allows AI agents and leading AI tools to access real audience perspectives, rather than relying on generic AI-generated content.
Since launching in December 2025, OriginalVoices has built a network of tens of thousands of 1:1 Digital Twin profiles, available to query on demand by AI agents, or inside leading AI tools including ChatGPT and Claude. The company’s recent partnership with YouGov to launch a joint product – YouGov Parallax – also marks a major milestone, pairing YouGov’s panel, built over two decades, with OriginalVoices’ twin infrastructure to turn that data into living twins customers can speak with on demand.
For press enquiries, please contact Not Born Yesterday PR for OriginalVoices at originalvoicespr@notbornyesterday.co.uk or +44 (0)204 569 0605.
About OriginalVoices:
OriginalVoices is a UK-based company that is building the human context layer for AI. Its platform is powered by a network of tens of thousands of digital twins, each owned and trained by the real person it represents. Through its consumer app, Twineo, people can create and train an AI version of themselves, which they can then use to contribute to research and earn money. OriginalVoices provides enterprise customers with access to this human-grounded data through its platform, API, and integrations with AI tools. The company also partners with YouGov to expand its digital twin network internationally.
About Iona Star:
Iona Star is an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in the data and infrastructure that AI runs on. Led by partners with extensive experience in data and technology businesses, Iona Star brings both capital and hands-on expertise to the companies it backs. For more information, visit ionastar.com.
