Onix
Category: AI in Healthcare
Onix builds 'Personal Intelligence' — a private AI platform trained exclusively on licensed expert knowledge (health & wellness) rather than scraped web data, with experts retaining governance over their AI systems. Onix was founded in 2025. The company is led by David S. Bennahum. Based in Montreal, Canada. Team size: 2-10. Total funding raised: $5M. Latest round: Pre-Seed. Key investors include Alpha Edison, Garage Capital, Ride Home Fund, Jeremy Zimmer (UTA co-founder), JS Cournoyer (Real Ventures co-founder).
- Founded
- 2025
- Headquarters
- Montreal, Canada
- Team size
- 2-10
- Total funding
- $5M
Value proposition
Provides always-on access to AI versions ('onixes') of vetted health and wellness experts, trained on licensed/unpublished expert knowledge, with on-device privacy (no data collection, no conversation logs) and provenance/authorship preservation.
Products and solutions
Personal Intelligence® platform, iOS app (early access) with AI 'onixes' of health/wellness practitioners (psychiatry, addiction recovery, parenting, sleep psychology, integrative cardiology, longevity, Ayurveda, family medicine), group chat with multiple onixes and humans
Unique value
Expert-governed, private, sovereign AI built on licensed expert knowledge instead of scraped internet data — preserving provenance and authorship while keeping all chat data on-device (inference costs ~1/200th of a frontier model).
Target customer
Consumer-facing individuals seeking personalized health and wellness guidance; health and wellness experts/content creators who license their knowledge for a 70% revenue share.
Industries served
Health and wellness (consumer AI), expanding to broader expert domains.
Technology advantage
Trains smaller on-device language models (not frontier models); all chat data stored locally with no conversation logs; experts bring proprietary data (no data bottleneck); inference costs ~1/200th of a frontier model; built under strict Canadian privacy law.
How they differentiate
Unlike big-tech AI that scrapes public web data and centralizes user data, Onix trains exclusively on licensed expert knowledge, runs small models on-device, stores no user data, and gives experts governance and a 70% revenue share over their AI versions.
Main competitors
ChatGPT (OpenAI), other consumer AI assistants (e.g., general-purpose chatbots), AI health/wellness apps.
Key partnerships
Mila (Montreal AI research institute founded by Yoshua Bengio), ALL IN Montreal conference (Canada's Top 100 AI Startups 2025 & 2026).
Notable customers
Health/wellness experts including psychiatrist & author David Rabin, family nurse practitioner Ashley Shrader, nutritionist Ashley Koff (tried by Esther Dyson, founding chair of ICANN).
Major milestones
Founded 2025, named Canada's Top 100 AI Startup (ALL IN) 2025 and 2026, launched Personal Intelligence® category (April 2026), raised $5M USD pre-seed (Sept 2026), partnered with Mila.
Growth metrics
10-person team (hiring 4 more); launched with ~17 vetted experts; iOS early access with full commercial availability expected later in 2026.
Market positioning
Early-stage pioneer of the 'Personal Intelligence' category — positioned as the privacy/trust alternative to frontier consumer AI, initially focused on health and wellness.
Geographic focus
Canada (Montreal HQ), North America; leveraging 'Brand Canada' trust and strict privacy law.
Patents and IP
Personal Intelligence® (claimed registered mark in product/press); ONIX USPTO serial 99123268 (filed 2025-04-07, Class 9 AI/personal-data software) and Canadian TM app 2390423 by 16445039 Canada Inc (Montreal).
About David S. Bennahum
Ex-WIRED contributing editor; serial tech entrepreneur (Founder/CEO of Ready Maker / Ready Games; also founded Kandu); BA Harvard University. Moved to Canada in 2017.
Latest news about Onix
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Official website: https://onix.life