When Justin Kim, co-founder and CEO of Huphe first launched his company about four years ago, not selling AI sales guidance to banks, financial services or insurance companies. The company originally started as Ami, a mental wellness platform that focused on how people manage stress, form habits and change behavior over time.
“I’ve always been a big sports fan—basketball, soccer, Formula 1, MMA—and what draws me to all of them is performance. In my free time, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what really drives human performance. People are very different, but in all sports, there are clear patterns in how performance occurs,” Kim told TechCrunch.
His curiosity eventually shaped his professional focus. Kim began exploring what drives performance at work, and one theme kept coming up: mental toughness. This idea led him to found a startup in 2022.
An early partnership with Meta, which backed this startup in its first round, helped drive home more hard-won lessons: software only works when it fits everyday behavior, like how people already live and work, and tools designed to help people “get better” often fail if they’re critical, abstract, or disconnected from real work, Kim told TechCrunch.
These ideas followed the startup through its pivot and today shape Hupo’s approach to sales coaching. less about replacing human judgment and more about helping people at times that really matter in banking, insurance and financial services.
Kim said the change wasn’t as dramatic as it might seem. “The key problem in both cases is performance at scale. In banking and insurance, results vary, not because of incentives, but because training, feedback and confidence differ. Traditional coaching can’t reach everyone, and managers can’t be part of every conversation.”
AI that understands real-time conversations now allows teams to receive consistent guidance, even in the highly regulated, complex industry, Kim noted.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
Hupo raised a $10 million series led by DST Global Partners, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Goodwater Capital, January Capital and Strong Ventures. In addition, the Singapore-based startup now serves dozens of clients in APAC and Europe, including Prudential, AXA, Manulife, HSBC, Bank of Ireland and Grab.
“BFSI [Banking, Financial Services and Insurance] it is an extremely difficult industry for early-stage companies, but our clients typically extend contracts 3–8 times within the first six months,” said the founder. “We will be expanding into the US in the first half of this year, where highly distributed financial models create a strong need for scalable guidance.”
Kim began his career at Bloomberg selling business software to banks, asset managers and insurers, where he saw how complex regulated sales could be. He later worked in product development at South Korean fintech Viva Republica, the company behind Toss, learning how technology based on real user behavior could reshape traditional financial services.
“Hupo is at the intersection of these experiences. I understood the buyer, the end user and the operational reality of selling financial products,” said Kim. “Once AI became capable of understanding context and coaching in real time, it became obvious to me that sales coaching—especially in banking and insurance—was the right place to apply it.”
Many AI sales guidance tools start with technology first, Kim said, but Hupo took a different approach, building its platform around the way banks and insurers operate. “One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that, especially with large enterprises, you have to understand the business and their industry in detail,” he added, noting that Hupo’s models were trained from the ground up on real financial products, common objections, customer types and regulatory requirements.
The latest round brings total funding to $15 million since the company was founded in 2022. The new capital will be used to expand its product, including real-time coaching capabilities, scaling enterprise-wide growth, growing go-to-market efforts in banking, financial services and insurance, and team growth.
In five years, Kim says he wants Hupo to move beyond sales guidance and help large teams perform at scale, providing managers and employees with clearer insights and practical guidance, even for tens of thousands of people.
