Maria01 resident Keiku focuses on personalised audio listening stream to bring talk audio back as an everyday media content. The company offers the easiest way to listen to content that is selectively curated for your personal taste. In order to fulfil that mission, Kieku raised 700,000 euros in seed funding. The money came from Swedish serial entrepreneurs Gert Nordin and Erik Fischbeck and Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation.
Since 2016 Kieku was building a platform that works as a Youtube for audio – podcasts and audio blogging. Kieku application learns quickly about your audio preferences based on what you listened, skipped and liked and creates an audio feed tailored made for your specific needs. The app also enables you to start broadcasting your own audio content and create micropodcasts in seconds.
The new service that Kieku offers will help make the listening experience more interesting and meaningful with the use of AI. The AI core engine of the Kieku service, in combination with the unique and precise social sharing functionality, is said to fill a gap in the podcast domain not yet served by other audio services. By registering and pushing play, the AI algorithms begin to learn your listening behaviour and offers audio content that matches your interests. In addition, users have the option to add their favourite content to their personal collection with RSS-feeds.
“The global expansion is planned to continue in 2018, and we are also open for new potential investors to join in,” says Erik Fischbeck, Kieku Labs board member and investor.
“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”, comments Tomi Halonen, chairman of Kieku Labs.
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.
