JIC Ventures leads €1M+ round in AI audiobook startup Elredo

What's the deal? Elredo, a Czech startup that uses AI to produce and distribute audiobooks for publishers, has raised more than €1M (almost CZK 25M). The round was led by Brno-based JIC VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with angel investor Jiří Hlavenka, the Central Bohemian Innovation Centre and Sweden's Bond Ventures joining. Existing backers Petr Sochora (12bullets), Petr Bláha (Eurowag) and Martin Ježek followed on. Elredo also received a €200K grant from the Technology Incubation programme.

Context Elredo builds end-to-end infrastructure for publishers to produce, localise and distribute audiobooks, making it viable to voice titles and back catalogues that traditional studio production could not justify. Clients include Albatros Media, Euromedia Group, Wiley and HarperCollins, and it distributes to more than 160 sales channels worldwide. The new capital goes mainly into sales and US expansion: part of the commercial, production and support team is moving to New Jersey, close to where most of the world's large publishers sit.

The deal is one of the first investments of JIC Ventures, the fund launched in April 2026 by Brno innovation agency JIC, which plans to back around twenty early-stage tech startups, mainly from Czechia and Slovakia.

Source JIC Ventures press release, 1 October 2026, via iBrno.cz