AI startup Helix has announced the close of a $6.2 million funding round led by Chicago Ventures, with participation from several other institutional investors. Dag Kittlaus, co-founder of Siri, will serve as an advisor to the company. Founded in 2025, Helix's core technology is a voice recognition solution that runs locally on users' devices, determining whether a user is a real person and estimating their age without collecting sensitive personal information. It can replace or supplement traditional CAPTCHA verification and addresses the challenges facing conventional identity verification methods in the era of generative AI. The model can run on-device on devices such as the iPhone 13. Current customers include home healthcare service providers, and the company is also exploring use cases such as verifying taxi driver identity and detecting intoxication and mental stress through voice analysis. The technology can only determine whether a speaker is a real person; it cannot identify a specific individual, determine whether someone is lying, and currently cannot reliably detect AI agents during real-time calls. Industry observers believe this type of voice-based, privacy-preserving identity verification is poised to become a new technological pathway beyond traditional CAPTCHAs.