Curio

Curio is a premium audio journalism platform that converts hand-picked articles from the world's leading publications into professionally narrated audio, allowing subscribers to consume quality journalism while commuting, exercising or doing anything else that keeps their hands and eyes busy. Founded in London in 2016, the platform was born from co-founder Govind Balakrishnan's time at the BBC, where he observed how exceptional reporting consistently got lost in social media feeds and breaking news cycles.

Curio partners with more than 50 top-tier publications including the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Atlantic and Wired, curating the best long-form journalism, analysis and investigation into a single, ad-free subscription. Stories are narrated by professional voice actors and organised by topic, publication and editorial playlists. The platform has also launched Curio AI — an AI assistant called Rio that generates personalised audio episodes from its catalogue in response to user prompts, exclusively using fact-checked, human-narrated journalism.

Curio has raised over $11 million from investors including Earlybird, Draper Esprit, Cherry Ventures and Horizons Ventures. The app has been named App of the Year by Google, featured at Apple's global Keynote event, and reached listeners in over 150 countries who have collectively streamed more than 18 million minutes of audio. The company continues to expand internationally, with a particular focus on English-speaking markets in the US, UK, India, Australia and South Africa.