Hupo raises $10M to scale AI sales coaching for finance

Hupo, an AI-powered sales coaching platform, has secured $10 million in Series A funding. The investment round was led by DST Global Partners, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Goodwater Capital, January Capital, and Strong Ventures. This new capital brings the APAC-headquartered startup’s total funding to $15 million since its founding in 2022. Hupo plans to use the funding to expand its product features, including real-time coaching capabilities, scale its enterprise-grade deployments, grow its go-to-market efforts, and build out its team.

The funding follows a strategic evolution for the company, which launched about four years ago as Ami, a mental wellness platform. Co-founder and CEO Justin Kim pivoted the startup to focus on AI-driven sales coaching for the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector. The shift represents a continuation of Kim’s focus on human performance at scale, rather than an attempt to replace human judgment. Early backing from Meta, which invested in the startup’s seed round, helped shape the product’s design, emphasizing tools that integrate into daily workflows without being abstract or judgmental.

“The core problem in both cases is performance at scale. In banking and insurance, results vary, not because of motivation, but because training, feedback, and confidence differ. Traditional coaching can’t reach everyone, and managers can’t sit in on every conversation,” said Kim.

Hupo’s platform is designed to analyze conversations in real time, allowing financial institutions to deliver consistent coaching in a highly regulated environment. The startup currently serves dozens of customers across APAC and Europe. Its customer list includes:

• Prudential
• AXA
• Manulife
• HSBC
• Bank of Ireland
• Grab

According to Kim, BFSI is a difficult vertical for early-stage companies, but Hupo’s customers typically expand contracts 3x to 8x within the first six months. To build on this traction, Hupo plans to expand into the U.S. in the first half of this year, targeting distribution-heavy financial models that require scalable coaching solutions. Kim’s background includes selling enterprise software to financial institutions at Bloomberg and working on product development at fintech Viva Republica, experiences that informed Hupo’s industry-specific training models. The startup’s models were trained from the start on real financial products, common objections, client types, and regulatory requirements.

Why it matters

Hupo’s successful pivot demonstrates the growing demand for specialized AI tools in highly regulated industries like BFSI, where performance consistency is a major operational challenge.