When Justin Kim, co-founder and CEO of Hupo, first launched his company about four years within the past, it wasn’t selling AI-powered gross sales coaching to banks, finance services, or insurance protection corporations. The corporate within the origin began as Ami, a mental wellness platform centered on how other folks arrange strain, bag habits, and commerce habits over time.
“I’ve always been a mountainous sports fan – basketball, soccer, System One, MMA – and what attracts me to all of them is efficiency. In my free time, I’ve spent fairly tons of time taking into account what essentially drives human efficiency. Of us are very diversified, however at some stage in sports, there are certain patterns in how efficiency reveals up,” Kim acknowledged in an interview with TechCrunch.
His curiosity at closing formed his skilled focal point. Kim began exploring what drives efficiency at work, and one theme kept surfacing: mental resilience. That thought led him to realized a startup in 2022.
Early work with Meta, which backed this startup within the seed spherical, helped sharpen some in actual fact-earned classes: diagram easiest works when it matches into day to day habits esteem how other folks already live and work, and instruments designed to back other folks “toughen” normally fail if they’re judgmental, summary, or disconnected from right work, Kim told TechCrunch.
The following tips followed the startup via its pivot, and right this moment time they shape Hupo’s capacity to gross sales coaching; less about changing human judgment and extra about serving to other folks within the moments that in actual fact subject in banking, insurance protection, and financial services.
Kim acknowledged the shift wasn’t as dramatic as it could probably per chance well well seem. “The core area in every cases is efficiency at scale. In banking and insurance protection, results fluctuate, not thanks to motivation, however on story of practicing, solutions, and self belief fluctuate. Former coaching can’t attain all individuals, and bosses can’t sit down in on every dialog.”
AI that understands conversations in right-time now enables groups to win fixed coaching, even within the extremely regulated, complicated industry, Kim famend.
Techcrunch tournament
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
Hupo has raised a $10 million Sequence A led by DST World Companions, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Goodwater Capital, January Capital, and Solid Ventures. Besides, the Singapore-headquartered startup now serves dozens of customers in APAC and Europe, including Prudential, AXA, Manulife, HSBC, Financial institution of Eire, and Seize.
“BFSI [Banking, Financial Services and Insurance] is a notoriously anxious vertical for early-stage corporations, however our customers normally magnify contracts 3–8x for the length of the first six months,” the founder acknowledged. “We’ll be expanding into the US within the first half of this one year, the save distribution-heavy financial items impact a solid need for scalable coaching.”
Kim began his career at Bloomberg, selling endeavor diagram to banks, asset managers, and insurers, the save he saw how complicated regulated gross sales will be. He later labored on product constructing at South Korean fintech Viva Republica, the company within the back of Toss, finding out how technology constructed spherical right client habits could well well reshape former financial services.
“Hupo sits at the intersection of those experiences. I understood the client, the head client, and the operational actuality of promoting financial products,” Kim acknowledged. “As soon as AI grew to was in a position to idea context and coaching in right time, it grew to was obvious to me that gross sales coaching—particularly in banking and insurance protection—used to be the valid web page to practice it.”
Many AI gross sales coaching instruments open with the technology first, Kim acknowledged, however Hupo took a irregular capacity, constructing its platform spherical how banks and insurers perform. “One of the necessary excellent classes I’ve realized is that, particularly with substantial enterprises, you like to price their enterprise and industry in detail,” he added, noting that Hupo’s items were skilled from the open on right financial products, typical objections, client kinds, and regulatory requirements.
Essentially the most popular spherical brings total funding to $15 million since the company used to be founded in 2022. The contemporary capital will gallop in direction of expanding its product, including right-time coaching parts, scaling endeavor-grade deployments, rising gallop-to-market efforts in banking, financial services, and insurance protection, and constructing out the crew.
In five years, Kim says he needs Hupo to circulate beyond gross sales coaching and back substantial groups produce at scale, giving managers and workers clearer insights and purposeful guidance, even at some stage in tens of hundreds of oldsters.