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Brisbane-based startup Enhance Labs has raised $2.3 million in pre-seed funding to tackle “AI slop” - an emerging problem for knowledge workers who are being frustrated by artificial intelligence tools that don’t deliver what they promised.
The capital raising, which was led by Blackbird Ventures with participation from QIC Ventures, will be applied to development of the company’s voice-first collaboration platform that amplifies human thinking rather than replacing it.
Enhance Labs, which was founded by three technology veterans who witnessed the AI slop problem firsthand at the world's largest tech companies, is aiming to bring human judgement into the AI space.
The startup says knowledge workers are growing frustrated with AI tools that promise efficiency but deliver “generic outputs requiring extensive human revision”.
"AI slop" refers to content that looks professional but lacks the insight and context needed to make real impact at work.
According to recent research from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab, “workslop” takes an average of two hours to resolve each incident and costs US$9 million a year for a 10,000-person company.
"We've tried almost every AI tool available,” says Michael Tolo, partner at Blackbird Ventures.
“While they make first drafts faster, they actually slow down the most important work: uncovering key insights and communicating them clearly to improve decision-making.
"Enhance Labs built what's actually needed: a way to capture your best ideas in the moment and refine them with nuanced context. Now, it's where I do all my highest value thinking.”
Enhance Labs was founded by Haziq Nordin, a former Amazon engineer, Mike Keating, a second-time founder, and Jesse Head, a former Google designer.
The company says that each left established tech careers after recognising that the industry's obsession with automation was making knowledge work worse, not better.
"We've learned that the most valuable work still requires human insight," says Nordin, the CTO of Enhance Labs.
"We're not replacing that insight. We're making it easier to capture, refine and share."
Early adopters from Amazon, Canva, Microsoft and leading startups have reported feeling “energised by the freedom to think out loud whenever inspiration strikes” such as during commutes, between meetings or while grabbing coffee.
The company says the voice-first approach transforms these previously lost moments into their most productive thinking time.
"The response from early users hints at something much bigger," says Head, the chief data officer of Enhance Labs.
"We're building the last mile of superintelligence, where increasingly powerful models meet human insight. Voice is just our starting point for reimagining how humans and AI collaborate."
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