Capital Region startup Markets EQ is acquiring Helios Life Enterprises, another area startup.
The two artificial intelligence startups already shared a CEO, Sean Austin. He said it was decided to combine the two companies to strengthen Market EQ's offerings by housing their respective products under one name.
"It just becomes a very, we think, strong proposition. It'll make us better at products, give us more customers and clients, and basically, lift all ships. There's a lot of local investors and we want to just power one ship to get to the next level," Austin said.
The acquisition brings Helios' AI voice tone analysis technology alongside Markets EQ's generative AI software.
Helios had developed technology to analyze and derive meaning from tonal shifts in speech, specifically in the comments made by executives during public company earnings calls. Helios' 20 years of analyzed earnings call data will become part of Markets EQ.
Austin co-founded Helios Life Enterprises in 2019. Since its founding, the company had raised funding totaling $1.2 million on a rolling basis.
Markets EQ was founded last summer by Austin and Daniel Shields, the company's chief financial officer.
Markets EQ is a generative AI tool that can analyze pitches and presentations and give feedback based on questions users ask. The Markets EQ software was created for professionals who work in communications, investor relations and finance.
The addition of Helios' technology doubles down on the financial industry focus of the company.
"We know earnings calls matter. We know there are certain corporate comms that matter. But the vision is it can be all over. We want to be in capital markets on sales teams and marketing teams, on board teams, everyone who's doing communication," Austin said. "Ultimately it'll go beyond on finance, but I think will be pretty busy with finance for a long time. Financial capital markets are a gigantic space for communications, but we need to start at one place that's very, very specific so we can be successful."
Some terms of the deal — including the asset sale price — were not disclosed, but Austin said Helios' chief revenue and chief technology officers would become part of Markets EQ. Austin will remain CEO of Markets EQ. Helios shareholders will get a piece of the asset sale price.
Helios has existing relationship with Google, Austin said, and the acquisition will bring that to Markets EQ.
"Basically, EQ can now move forward more quickly with voice data that nobody has," he said.
Next steps include closing Markets EQ's $600,000 second pre-seed funding round. Austin said the round is 50% complete, and the goal is to finish it by June. That would put the company over $1 million in funding, as it had closed another $500,000 pre-seed round earlier this year.
Then, the company will open a $5 million round will the goal to close it by the end of the year.
Markets EQ has also joined an incubator, the UAlbany Innovation Center.
Recently, OpenAI, the company that created AI juggernaut ChatGPT, has unveiled voice-related AI products. Austin said the excitement around the use of voice in AI products is pushing Markets EQ forward.
"I did not know about those announcements, but we did know Google on the Helios side was paying more attention," he said. "There's a lot of signals leading up the last six months. The cherry on top was if you hear it from clients, or potential clients, over and over again, we have to go where we can really separate and add a ton of value to something that we think could be a very big company. If we can pull this off, which I think we can, then there's billions of dollars in revenue on this."
