Ethos, a London-based startup harnessing AI to match individuals with meaningful opportunities, has announced a €3 million funding round to surface real expertise in an online world dominated by credentials, clout, and noisy self-promotion.
The round was led by General Catalyst and also saw participation from 8VC, Conviction, Common Magic, Interface, and prominent angels from Sequoia, a16z, and senior partners at firms including McKinsey and SoftBank.
“We use cutting edge AI to evaluate millions of datapoints in seconds, with specific domain understanding,” added Ethos. “From reading academic papers, GitHub repositories, blog articles, podcasts to portfolios, AI can evaluate the full extent of human expertise at scale.”
Founded by James Lo — a former consultant at McKinsey and operator at SoftBank — and Daniel J. Mankowitz, an AI researcher from Google DeepMind, Ethos is tackling one of the business world’s persistent frustrations: identifying truly knowledgeable people amidst a flood of profiles.
Their platform enables companies to find experts at scale by using AI to read and evaluate data across a range of digital sources, from academic papers and GitHub repositories to blog posts and podcasts.
The startup launched by offering companies an automated expert network. Rather than wait days for candidates to be manually sourced — as is often the case with traditional expert networks — companies can now describe the knowledge they require and access relevant expert profiles rapidly.
Already used by over 25 global investment firms and consultancies, Ethos enables paid consulting calls on-platform, with plans to expand into connecting advisors with startups, speakers with conferences, and talent with companies.
Ethos’ algorithm constructs a knowledge graph of the economy, tracing public data to determine not just where someone worked, but what they contributed. It aims to replace blunt indicators like university prestige and job titles with a more nuanced understanding of individual expertise.
“In a sea of distracting noise, we built Ethos to be the thoughtful listener: understanding what companies and people want, and matching them to each other,” added Ethos. “We believe matching people to opportunities underpins the entire human economy. Nailing this problem will bring a sea of change to massive industries.”
The company sees its current expert network offering as just the beginning. In time, the same technology could power better recruitment, market research, speaking engagements and more.
For now, the focus remains on expert calls — a critical part of due diligence and strategy across finance and consulting — where Ethos already appears to be shortening timelines and improving match quality.
Rather than boosting the signal of the loudest voices, Ethos is aiming to give voice — and opportunity — to those with real substance.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2025/03/ai-meets-headhunting-ethos-secures-e3-million-to-spotlight-experts-lost-in-the-noise/
