Insider Brief
- Onix, the company behind Personal Intelligence, a new AI category built on trusted experts rather than general internet data, raised $5 million USD in pre-seed funding led by Alpha Edison, with participation from Garage Capital, Ride Home Fund, and strategic investors including Jeremy Zimmer of UTA.
- Founded by David Bennahum and Dr. Nicholas Nadeau, the platform trains AI exclusively on licensed expert knowledge governed by the experts themselves, launching with Founding Experts across health and wellness including William Li, Jordan Metzl, and Dave Rabin.
- The round is more than seven times the average Canadian pre-seed deal in 2025, and comes amid a partnership with Mila, recognition as one of Canada’s Top 100 AI Startups for 2026, and early access availability on iOS.
PRESS RELEASE — Onix, the company behind Personal Intelligence®, a new category of AI built on trusted experts rather than the average internet, has announced $5 million USD (approximately $7 million CAD) in pre-seed funding led by Alpha Edison, with participation from Garage Capital, Ride Home Fund, and strategic investors including Jeremy Zimmer, co-founder of UTA, and JS Cournoyer, co-founder of Real Ventures.
The round marks the company’s first institutional capital and reflects growing confidence in its fundamentally different approach: private, expert-owned intelligence systems trained exclusively on licensed expert knowledge and governed by the experts themselves. The funding will accelerate platform development, expert onboarding, research and evaluation, as Onix heads to public availability. This momentum comes at a time when more people turn to AI for health advice, while trust and provenance emerge as defining challenges for the AI industry.
“The next generation of AI will be defined by trust,” said Nick Grouf, Managing Partner at Alpha Edison. “Onix has built a fundamentally different approach around human expertise and privacy. That’s why we invested.”
Early participants are already seeing the impact. “I was skeptical of digital medical advice. Then Jordan Metzl’s onix actually changed my behaviour, and no app has ever done that,” said James Schauer, a startup founder who used the platform while managing a knee injury. Cindy P., a Hashimoto’s patient dismissed for almost 30 years, said McCall McPherson’s onix “coached me exactly how to advocate for myself. My doctor did a complete 180.”
Experts see the same gap from the other side. “All the work we put into our careers, the biggest problem is it never reaches the people who need to hear it,” said Dave Rabin, MD, PhD. “Onix is going to demonstrate that AI can scale that knowledge and help heal the world.”
The financing stands out in a tight Canadian venture market. According to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA), the round is more than seven times the average Canadian pre-seed deal in 2025 and exceeds the average Canadian seed round. It also comes as U.S. investor participation in Canadian pre-seed venture deals fell from 23% in 2024 to 8% in 2025, making a U.S.-led investment in a Canada-based company a notable signal of confidence.
The funding comes amid significant momentum for Onix, including the addition of new health experts, a partnership with Mila, the Montreal-based AI research institute founded by Yoshua Bengio, and recognition as one of Canada’s Top 100 AI Startups for 2026 by ALL IN. New health experts joining the platform include Tim Westbrook, MS, addiction recovery expert; Robin Berman, MD, psychiatrist and parenting expert; Aric A. Prather, PhD, sleep psychologist; Dr. Sanjay Bhojraj, MD, integrative cardiologist; Nathalie Niddam, CNP, BPC, longevity and biohacking expert; Shivani Gupta, PhD, Ayurvedic practitioner focused on inflammation; and Ashley Shrader, DNP, IFMCP, family nurse practitioner.
Onix was co-founded by David Bennahum, a former WIRED contributing editor and serial technology entrepreneur, and Dr. Nicholas Nadeau, who scaled humanoid robotics company 1X as CTO.
It launched with a cohort of Founding Experts across key health and wellness categories, including William Li, MD; Jordan Metzl, MD; Michael Rich, MD; Dave Rabin, MD, PhD; Jill Carnahan, MD; Krista Ramonas, MD; Joel “Gator” Warsh, MD; Kwadwo Kyeremanteng, MD; Elissa Epel, PhD; Nicole Beurkens, PhD; Meenal Agarwal, OD; Christian Drapeau, MSc; Juliana Hauser, LMFT; Ashley Koff, RD; McCall McPherson, PA-C; and Mark Sisson.
“Today’s AI dilutes knowledge, depriving people from accessing true expertise that defines the standards of human care,” said David S. Bennahum, Co-founder and CEO of Onix. “We believe the future belongs to technologies that preserve provenance, authorship, and human judgment, so people know who they’re learning from and experts retain ownership of the knowledge they’ve spent a lifetime building.”
“The AI industry optimized for scale by scraping everything public,” said Nicholas Nadeau, PhD, Co-founder and CTO of Onix. “But the most valuable knowledge was never public: the unpublished frameworks, the case notes, the judgment an expert builds over a career. You can’t scrape that; you have to earn it. Onix builds with experts, so their knowledge reaches people intact and stays theirs.”
Onix is currently available in early access on iOS. Full commercial availability is expected later this year, with Android to follow.
To learn more, visit Onix.life and follow Onix on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and YouTube.
ABOUT ONIX
Onix is the world’s first Personal Intelligence® solution, a private, expert-driven AI built from the minds you’d most want in your corner to solve life’s hardest problems.
Onix doesn’t replace humans; it amplifies them. Participants get guidance from the experts they trust, anytime, anywhere, with personal, private advice. Onix gives experts a way to license their knowledge intentionally and maintain governance over how their intelligence systems operate, while scaling their work to help more people without surrendering their IP to centralized AI platforms.
PRESS CONTACT
Sara White
press@onix.life
832–314–2640
