Helios Emerges from Stealth with $4M Seed to Transform Public Policy with AI
July 11, 2025
When OpenAI was making waves with ChatGPT in 2022, Joe Scheidler, co-founder and CEO of Helios, was focused on a different mission: helping build the White House’s newly authorized cybersecurity office and navigating the tricky terrain of public-private coordination on cyber policies.
Scheidler’s future co-founder, Joseph Farsakh, was then at the State Department working on Yemen Houthi peace negotiations. Their paths crossed in national security discussions, sparking conversations about how large language models (LLMs) could revolutionize public policy workflows.
The Problem: Patchwork Tools and Fragmented Decision-Making
At the highest levels of government, decisions often rely on a scattered mix of spreadsheets, institutional memory, and disparate tools. Scheidler and Farsakh asked themselves: what if there were a better, AI-native way to support public policy decision-making—one designed specifically around how policies are crafted?
That question gave birth to Helios.
Building the Team and Product
To realize their vision, they brought on Brandon Smith, a machine learning veteran with experience at Microsoft and Datadog, to lead the company’s technical strategy.
Scheidler told TechCrunch, “Our unfair advantage is bringing a super unique blend of domain expertise, contacts, and technical expertise to a really important problem.”
Helios, which should not be confused with other companies sharing the same name, officially came out of stealth last month after raising $4 million in seed funding. The round was led by Unusual Ventures with participation from Founders Inc. and Alumni Ventures.
Introducing Proxi: An AI Operating System for Policy Professionals
Helios’ flagship product, Proxi, is an AI-based operating system built for public policy, regulatory affairs, legal, compliance, and government teams. Currently in beta, Proxi is already gaining traction with federal, state, and local government workers, as well as Fortune 500 companies and startups.
Proxi offers four core features:
Consult: A 24/7 conversational AI agent that continuously scans the legislative and regulatory environment, surfacing relevant insights tailored to the user’s role, objectives, and portfolio.
Scribe: An AI-assisted writing and collaboration tool that transforms Consult sessions into polished memos, filings, and policy documents.
Decipher: A data analysis tool that parses complex bills, reports, and filings into structured insights and risk alerts.
CRM: A visual stakeholder mapping and interaction tracking tool, helping users keep tabs on relationships and meeting notes.
Scheidler shared, “Decipher is exactly what I wished I had at the State Department when I spent too much time parsing long documents instead of building relationships with policymakers.”
Security and Compliance at the Forefront
With federal clients in mind, Helios employs top encryption standards and is actively undergoing compliance audits.
The company plans to use its seed funding to expand its product and engineering teams, prioritizing the right technical talent to scale the platform.
A Long-Term Vision to Own the Public Policy Tech Space
Rather than rushing to monetize, Helios is focused on deepening relationships and gathering detailed feedback from beta users.
“Our goal in five to seven years is for Helios to be synonymous with all government public and private interactions,” Scheidler said.
Helios aims to compete not only with short-term players like Bloomberg Government and FiscalNote but also longer-term incumbents such as Palantir, OpenGov, and Civica.
Scheidler noted, “Palantir just surpassed a $300 billion market cap. We think there’s a lot of room to play in this space over time.”
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