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When businesses need opinions, industry expertise, or strategic guidance for a project, they often rely on platforms like LinkedIn or expert networks such as GLG, Third Bridge, and AlphaSights. However, despite extensive searching, companies frequently struggle to find the right experts or receive high-quality insights tailored to their specific needs.

Today, most of these expert networking services require professionals to fill out forms focused on their job titles and previous positions. Those titles and descriptions are then used as the foundation for matching experts with companies seeking guidance.

London-based startup Ethos believes artificial intelligence can improve the experience for both experts and businesses. For professionals joining the platform, Ethos uses a voice-powered onboarding system that asks a broader range of questions to gather richer information about their knowledge, skills, and domain expertise—including areas that may not be reflected in a standard job title.

For companies, Ethos says this deeper data layer enables the platform to understand natural-language search queries better and provide more accurate matches for highly specialized projects.

The startup explained that its voice-based onboarding process and expanded expert data enable it to handle complex client requests. One example the company shared was helping organizations identify people who had worked at venture-backed startups funded by top-tier investors and who also possessed expertise in financial automation.

Another example involved pharmaceutical companies using the platform to search for doctors who not only specialize in a particular medical area but also have published academic papers on the topic or experience with drug development.

On Wednesday, Ethos announced that it raised a $22.75 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as a16z. Additional investors participating in the round included General Catalyst, XTX Markets, Evantic Capital, and Common Magic.

a16z general partner Anish Acharya said he believes older platforms like LinkedIn and GLG largely rely on shallow signals such as job titles and company names. According to him, Ethos can capture more nuanced forms of expertise and subspecializations through its voice-based interview process and curated onboarding questions.

“I think voice is the original form of human communication. Most people, you know, most people don’t know how to write their story down in a very succinct, compelling, and accurate way. Voice is a big unlock for Ethos,” Acharya said.

How Ethos plans to grow its expert network

Ethos was founded in 2024 by James Lo and Daniel Mankowitz.

Before launching the company, Lo worked at McKinsey before later joining SoftBank, where he contributed to transformation initiatives involving companies such as WeWork and Arm.

Mankowitz previously worked as an AI researcher at DeepMind, where he contributed to projects including YouTube’s video compression algorithm, Gemini, and the AlphaDev sorting algorithm.

The founders approached the expert-networking problem from different perspectives. Lo said he has long been interested in helping people access the right economic and employment opportunities. At the same time, Mankowitz viewed the economy itself as a knowledge graph comprising people, companies, products, and relationships that could be better connected through advanced algorithms.

“Traditional expert platforms almost purely focus on a mixture of job titles and job descriptions. We've noticed that most clients and employers aren't looking for a job title company. They’re looking for a specific skill and a specific capability. We also observed that, over time, looking for a skill and capability is going to merge between the human economy and the agent economy gradually,” Lo said.

In addition to information gathered directly from experts, Ethos analyses other publicly available sources, such as blogs, academic research papers, and social media profiles, to improve its ability to match businesses with relevant professionals.

The company also conducts interviews using its own platform and voice agents, extracting insights from those conversations. Startups like Listen Labs and Outset already provide conversational AI interview tools for enterprises, creating competition in the space. However, Ethos argues that its curated expert network and broader intelligence layer make its offering better suited to certain enterprise clients.

While Ethos declined to reveal its customers' names, the company said its platform is already used by major hedge funds, private equity firms, leading foundational AI labs, and enterprise consulting organizations. The company charges businesses project-based fees that can exceed 30%, depending on the nature and complexity of the work involved. Ethos also stated that it is currently on track to achieve “an eight-figure annualized dough, but it did not disclose exact financial figures.

The company also declined to reveal how many total experts are currently on the platform, but said that around 35,000 people are joining every week through its invite-based system. Ethos said it actively invites individuals it believes could benefit from the network.

One challenge the startup faces is ensuring that it continues to build an expert network that remains highly relevant to enterprise customers and their evolving needs.

According to the company, growing investment from AI labs attempting to map human talent and expertise has become a major tailwind for the business.

“Our perspective here is that the AI labs are pointing a giant capital gun at every economically valuable occupation in the world. They’re trying to map out every profession. And so that’s an amazing tailwind for us,” Lo said.

He added that many AI labs are increasingly building professional services across industries, including law, healthcare, finance, and management. As a result, those organizations and networks are filled with experts who can help improve models, provide strategic feedback, and guide product development.

Ethos currently has a team of 8 employees, and the founders say their goal is to keep the organization relevant while continuing to scale the business and expand its network.