The private AI coach that businesses can afford to hire for every employee launches at Transform 2026.
LAS VEGAS, NV, UNITED STATES, March 25, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Huckleberry today announced the launch of an AI professional coaching platform that gives every employee access to a world-class coach for $20 per seat per month, replacing executive coaching which costs $500+ per hour and, as a result, only serves executives.
Unveiled at Transform 2026 in Las Vegas, Huckleberry is voice-first, privately encrypted, and built around persistent memory. The coach knows every employee, remembers every previous conversation, understands company structure and policies and builds a relationship that compounds in value over time. A free tier gives every user 30 minutes of coaching per month with no credit card required.
The company was co-founded by Aaron Ward (CEO, Portland, Oregon), Marcus Hoefliger (Chief Growth Officer) and Diogo Bohm (CTO), both based in Auckland, New Zealand. Huckleberry is majority Māori-owned and has raised a pre-seed round of USD $1.2 million from institutional and angel investors across Oregon, New Zealand, and Australia.
“Seven years ago I started working with an executive coach and it transformed how I showed up as a leader and colleague, but also a husband, and a father. But to access that, I had to be a 40-something CEO of a venture-backed startup. That’s just wrong. Huckleberry is the product I wish I’d had in my twenties and today, anyone can use it.”, says Aaron Ward, Co-Founder & CEO.
Professional coaching is a $20 billion global industry that reaches fewer than 5% of workers. For HR teams, the gap is acute: business partners cannot be present for every difficult conversation, cannot catch every issue before it escalates, and too often only hear the full story after a resignation letter is handed in or a negative Glassdoor review lands.
The rise of AI has simultaneously made interpersonal skills – communication, influence, difficult conversations, leadership presence – the most valuable professional differentiators of the decade. Yet they remain the hardest to develop without consistent, personalized coaching support. Huckleberry was built to close that gap.
Huckleberry builds a genuine coaching relationship with each employee through private voice conversations – no forms, no typing, just talking. It connects to the tools already inside a company’s stack, enabling a depth of context no generic AI assistant can match:
1. Voice-based 360 feedback: colleagues share feedback by voice not surveys, giving the coach a real-time picture of how each employee shows up with others
2. Personal Assessments: including CliftonStrengths, Standout, DISC, and the Big Five personality framework
3. Meeting intelligence: integration with Granola and Google Calendar surfaces real work context: what was discussed, what decisions were made, what tensions exist
4. HRIS integration: connects to BambooHR, HiBob, Deel, Rippling, and Workday to ground every coaching conversation in accurate role, tenure, and performance data
5. Engagement platform integration: pulls from CultureAmp and Lattice so coaching reflects survey results, review cycles, and identified growth areas
The result is a coach that knows each employee better than most managers and can help them tackle the conversations they’ve been avoiding, develop the skills they need to grow, and navigate the path to their next promotion. Every session is 100% private. No content, topics, or coaching notes are shared with HR, managers, or the company under any circumstances.
For HR and people teams, Huckleberry extends the coverage existing HR business partners across the workforce, delivering productivity gains from coaching conversations that replace hours of meetings; and full risk and compliance control through company-defined guardrails, policy alignment, and data controls.
“HR business partners are stretched. They can’t be in every conversation, and they shouldn’t have to be. Huckleberry gives every employee a place to work through the hard stuff before it becomes an HR problem.”, says Ward.
Anyone can get started at gethuckleberry.com with 30 minutes of free coaching per month, no credit card required. Paid plans start at $20 per seat per month.
About Huckleberry
Huckleberry is an AI coaching and feedback platform headquartered across Portland, Oregon and Auckland, New Zealand. The company’s name draws on the frontier expression “I’m your Huckleberry” meaning: I’m the right person for this job, proven by reputation and character, not just a resume. The company’s mission is to make world-class coaching and feedback available to every worker on the planet.
Aaron Ward
Huckleberry
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