When OpenAI was having its ChatGPT second in 2022, Joe Scheidler, co-founder and CEO of Helios, was tackling a special type of problem: Serving to construct the White Home’s newly approved cybersecurity workplace and navigating the complexities of public-private coordination on cyber insurance policies.
His present co-founder, Joseph Farsakh, was additionally on the State Division, engaged on Yemen Houthi peace negotiations. The 2 overlapped in nationwide safety discussions and began buying and selling notes on how giant language fashions would possibly rework public coverage on a day-to-day stage.
On the extent the White Home operates, important choices are sometimes made utilizing a patchwork of instruments, spreadsheets, and institutional reminiscence. The founders thought: What if there was a greater strategy to assist choice making, one which mixed AI-native instruments with an understanding of how public coverage is set?
The reply to that query was the thought behind Helios. To make it actual, the co-founders introduced on Brandon Smith, a long-time acquaintance of Scheidler’s and a machine studying veteran who had labored at Microsoft and Datadog, to steer the technical imaginative and prescient.
“Our unfair benefit is bringing an excellent distinctive mix of area experience, contacts, and technical experience to a very vital drawback,” Scheidler instructed TechCrunch.
Helios (to not be confused with the payroll/HR administration solution, or the local weather/financial forecasting product of the identical identify) emerged from stealth final month with $4 million in seed funding. The spherical was led by Uncommon Ventures, with participation from Founders Inc. and Alumni Ventures, TechCrunch has completely discovered.

Helios’ flagship product is Proxi, an AI-based working system constructed for public coverage, regulatory affairs, authorized, compliance, and authorities groups, continues to be in beta. However, Scheidler says, the corporate is already seeing early traction with staff in federal, state, and native companies, in addition to Fortune 500 firms and startups.
“We needed to empower all public coverage, authorized and compliance professionals with end-to-end automation, deploying form of an online of safe AI brokers which might be educated and fine-tuned in opposition to actually sturdy public coverage information units to assist them on something from strategic advisement to very delicate and complicated writing merchandise, information evaluation and stakeholder mapping,” he mentioned.
Proxi has 4 core options. The primary is dubbed “Seek the advice of,” and Scheidler describes it as a “conversational AI agent, your 24/7, always-on public coverage workforce member who is continually scanning the legislative and regulatory atmosphere.”
Earlier than they start, prospects inform Proxi about themselves, their work, their portfolio, their focus and goals. The brokers then floor key data to the consumer each time they go browsing.
In a approach, Seek the advice of is much like one other software program platform by Therefore, which makes use of AI to assist organizations monitor geopolitical and enterprise danger.
Proxi’s second characteristic known as “Scribe.” It is a collaborative AI enhancing and writing software that helps coverage professionals flip their soundboarding classes with Seek the advice of into memos, filings and coverage paperwork. Then there’s “Decipher,” a large-scale information evaluation software that helps customers parse long-form payments, reviews and filings, and switch them into structured insights and danger alerts.
“That’s numerous what I spent my time doing on the State Division after I would have far most well-liked to simply be on the Hill, constructing relationships with people who find themselves really making draft amendments and provisions,” Scheidler mentioned.
Lastly, Proxi provides a CRM (buyer relationship administration) software that helps folks visually map out their stakeholder atmosphere and observe their interplay historical past, together with assembly notes.
It’s an all-in-one providing, Scheidler mentioned, noting that Helios makes use of prime encryption requirements for federal shoppers, and is presently working by way of compliance audits.
Helios plans to make use of the seed funding to flesh out its product and engineering workforce, with a concentrate on discovering the precise tech expertise.
Reasonably than dashing to monetize shortly, Scheidler says the startup is specializing in constructing long-term enterprise relationships and gathering meticulous suggestions from early beta customers. “Our objective in 5 to seven years from now’s for Helios to be fully synonymous with all authorities private and non-private interplay,” he added.
Which will imply barrelling previous short-term competitors like Bloomberg Authorities and Fiscal Be aware Discussion board to problem longer-term rivals like Palantir, OpenGov and Civica, the co-founder mentioned.
“Palantir simply surpassed a $300 billion market cap,” Scheidler mentioned. “We predict there’s numerous room to play on this area over time.”