Retellio, the St. John’s company that uses AI to create personalized podcasts for the staff of large businesses, has closed a $1.3 million venture capital round, to help finance its scaling plans.

St. John’s-based Pelorus Venture Capital led the round, which included such investors as The 51 (an Alberta-based investor in female-led companies), Charlottetown-based Island Capital Partners, Saint John-based East Valley Ventures, and others that were not named.  

The company formerly known as Aucure was founded last year by two alumni of cybersecurity unicorn Verafin, Andrea King and Brent Pretty. They had originally planned to use AI agents (tools that can interact with their digital environment to perform tasks) to help business-to-business software companies gather customer feedback.

In the autumn, the company pivoted so it is now using the agents to monitor companies’ sales calls and cull the most relevant statements made by clients. It packages these statements into customized podcasts that employees of the company can listen to to gain a deeper understanding of what clients are saying.

“For us, our real motivation is that we’re aiming to own the 8:00 to 8:30 market for staff every morning,” said CEO Pretty in an interview. “When employees go on their morning commute, or their morning jog or go to the gym, we want them to listen to our podcast rather than [conventional podcasts].”

Pretty explained that the problem Retellio solves is that large companies have difficulty learning what customers are saying on sales calls. Even if the companies could learn what a vast number of customers are saying, they’d have no way of sharing it with their staff.

“These companies have hundreds, some of them thousands, of calls every day,” said Pretty. “There’s so much data that it’s actually impossible to listen to it all.”

What Retellio does is assign AI agents to listen to all of a company’s sales calls and use artificial intelligence to determine what the most important segments of each call are. Every member of the company’s staff can then choose what subjects they want to listen to and receive a customized podcast each day to learn what customers are saying.

Retellio, which now has five employees, pivoted to the new product in September, and launched it for a few beta users in December. When asked what the response has been, Pretty said the company is getting positive feedback from users.

He said the company’s goal for 2025 is to nail down its product-market fit and then to scale the company. He added the funding will give Retellio “a few years” of runway.