Huckleberry raised US$1.2m in pre-seed funding to bring professional AI coaching to everyone at work, grounded in voice-based feedback from the people you actually work with.
This post is the original announcement of our pre-seed round, lightly updated. Huckleberry has since launched publicly. The mission is the same. The product has grown.
Investors from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia are backing the company building AI coaching for everyone at work, grounded in voice-based feedback from the people you actually work with.
Portland, Oregon, USA and Auckland, NZ. Huckleberry, the voice-first professional AI coaching platform, announced it has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding to bring professional AI coaching to everyone at work. Not just leaders. The round was led by Oregon Venture Fund, with support from Archangel Ventures and US and NZ tech founders including Nathan Christensen (CEO of Mineral), Rowan Simpson, and Serge Van Dam.
Founded by Aaron Ward, Diogo Böhm, and Marcus Hoefliger, Huckleberry is a professional AI coach you talk to about work. Behind the conversations, voice-based peer feedback gives the coach real input from the people you actually work with. The coach turns that into regular, useful guidance. The kind once reserved for executives with $500 an hour budgets.
“The career journey for most people looks like a drunkard’s walk, zig-zagging from one role to another, hoping to stumble into work that fits,” said Aaron Ward, Co-Founder and CEO. “Honest feedback can help people discover the work they love, where they can play to their natural strengths, and ultimately grow their careers. Huckleberry turns that into a regular habit, not a once-a-year event.”
Huckleberry pairs a voice-first AI coach with peer feedback to give every employee something they can actually act on. The coach helps you work the plan with regular check-ins by voice, all kept private to you.
“We built Huckleberry to make meaningful development accessible to everyone,” Ward said. “People just talk, AI listens, and the system returns clear, actionable steps. By using voice, we have made the conversation 10x faster and 100x more human.”
At Huckleberry, the vision has always been the same: bring the kind of professional coaching once reserved for the C-suite to everyone at work. Voice-based peer feedback was the foundation we needed. It gives the coach the context to make growth real for each employee. With this funding, we are investing in both layers.
Huckleberry analyzes peer feedback and turns it into private coaching context for each employee. HR teams save hundreds of hours of manual work. Employees get coaching that is actually relevant to the people they work with.
Companies like Oceania Healthcare, a publicly traded retirement village operator, are already seeing results. “Traditional feedback mechanisms can be incredibly resource intensive and confronting for the participants,” says Alex Howieson, GM of People and Culture. “What stands out about Huckleberry is how effortless, constructive, and engaging it is. Actionable feedback in the moment flows to participants and generates deep team-led conversations about performance and delivery.”
Ward, now based in Portland Oregon, previously founded AskNicely, a Series B customer experience platform and global success story which inspired the idea for Huckleberry.
“At AskNicely, we saw how using real-time customer feedback to drive recognition for frontline service workers transformed the experience for customers,” Ward said. “With Huckleberry, we are using feedback from colleagues to help professional workers take charge of their career development. It is a great example of how AI can make work better for people.”
The funding will be used to accelerate product development, advance AI models, expand the team, and support growth in key markets in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
Huckleberry’s long-term vision is to help one billion people love the work they do, using AI coaching grounded in feedback to grow their impact, reputation, and career.
Huckleberry is the professional AI coach for everyone at work. Voice-first, available 24/7, grounded in expert coaching frameworks (GROW, SBI, Radical Candor, Situational Leadership) and real feedback from the people you work with. Architecturally private by design: individual sessions are never accessible to managers, HR, or admins. Audio is processed in real time and never stored. The coach is portable and travels with the worker when they leave. Coaching that used to cost $500 an hour is now $20 a seat per month, on every employee’s phone. Headquartered in Portland and Auckland. Launched publicly at the Transform conference, April 29 2026.
Learn more at gethuckleberry.com.
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