OriginalVoices raises GBP £1 million to expand in US

OriginalVoices has raised £1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Iona Star, giving the London-based AI data company new backing as it expands in the US.

The funding will be used to grow the team, expand its digital twin network, build partnerships and increase its customer base. OriginalVoices is developing a platform that supplies what it describes as human context data for AI systems, using information from people who create digital versions of themselves through its consumer app, Twineo.

Founded to address what it sees as a gap between model output and real-world opinion, the business offers access to a network of digital twin profiles that can be queried by AI agents or used within existing AI tools. According to the company, tens of thousands of people have already used Twineo to create, train and manage a digital twin based on their views, preferences and lived experience.

The round offers an early test of investor appetite for businesses focused on data inputs rather than the underlying AI models. Iona Star, the venture capital firm leading the round, invests in AI-related data and infrastructure businesses and has previously backed other companies in the sector.

OriginalVoices says its platform is designed to help AI systems and teams understand what people think and feel about products, brands, services and topics. It argues that while many AI systems can produce content quickly, they often lack up-to-date, specific information about public opinion, consumer sentiment and audience reaction.

That approach centres on a network of what the company calls 1:1 Digital Twins. Each profile is linked to and owned by a real person, who remains involved in updating and validating the attached information. People can also earn money when their twin contributes to research, according to the company.

Growth plans

The fresh capital is expected to support the next stage of development as the company refines its real-time data offering and broadens its commercial reach. That includes a greater focus on the US market, alongside product development and hiring.

OriginalVoices launched in December 2025 and says it has since built a network of tens of thousands of profiles. Those profiles are available through its own platform and through integrations with tools including ChatGPT and Claude.

The company has also partnered with YouGov on a joint product called YouGov Parallax. The arrangement combines YouGov's panel data with OriginalVoices' twin system, allowing customers to interact with digital representations built from that information.

David Dobrin, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OriginalVoices, outlined the company's view of the market as it announced the funding round.

"Choosing an investment partner isn't easy, but Iona Star brings a genuine understanding of the space we're building in and acts as an extension of our team, which we are extremely grateful for. As AI models get more powerful and can generate almost anything instantly, the real context gap is human insight, opinion and feedback: knowing what people think and feel, not just relying on a model guessing or making assumptions from its training data. That's what OriginalVoices gives - confidence that AI decisions and outputs are grounded in real human perspective and audience understanding - leading to improved decision-making and outputs. With Iona Star's backing, we are ready for our next phase: growing the team, sharpening our product offering, and expanding further into the US," said David Dobrin, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OriginalVoices.

The deal also reflects a broader debate in the AI sector over the quality and origin of the data used to inform systems and automated decisions. Investors and companies have increasingly focused on whether newer AI products need more current, specific and attributable data sources to improve reliability and relevance.

For OriginalVoices, that argument underpins its pitch to businesses using AI in research, creative work and decision-making. Rather than relying on synthetic audiences or model-generated personas, it is trying to build a commercial data layer based on direct participation from real users.

Kevin McGivern, Partner at Iona Star, said the firm sees that data question as central to AI performance.

"Across industries, the limit to AI effectiveness is no longer model capability; it's the quality of the data feeding it. OriginalVoices stands out by bringing a proprietary, real-time human insight layer to AI workflows that reflects the nuances and realities of human opinion. That's a structural advantage, and we want to be part of supporting OriginalVoices' development to improve the future of AI," said Kevin McGivern, Partner at Iona Star.