This Startup Is Using AI To Keep Oral History Alive

A college student's personal loss has turned into a growing technology platform that helps families and communities preserve oral histories and generational stories before they disappear.

A college student’s personal loss has turned into a growing technology platform that helps families and communities preserve oral histories and generational stories before they disappear. Josiah Faison, a Maryland native and former finance student at Rochester Institute of Technology, started the cultural preservation company Oria after his grandmother passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Afrotech, this experience led Faison to rethink his career and create technology focused on archiving personal stories and family histories.

Faison said the idea came to him while he was looking for ways to document his grandmother’s life experiences after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The pandemic’s travel restrictions kept him from returning home before her death, which made him feel as if important family memories and generational knowledge had been lost.

This idea eventually became Oria, a platform that lets users collect and organize oral histories through video, audio, and written submissions. The startup officially launched its mobile app in 2024 and a web-based platform in 2025, according to Afrotech.

While taking part in the Simone Center Student Accelerator Program at RIT, Faison received $10,000 in seed funding to help grow the company. He also spoke with hundreds of people to see if other families faced similar difficulties in preserving memories of their loved ones.

Oria’s platform is designed for families, nonprofits, and institutions that want to archive personal narratives and community histories. The company claims its software can create digital oral history campaigns in minutes and uses artificial intelligence tools to transcribe interviews, organize themes, and find connections between stories.

The startup joins a growing group of tech companies dedicated to digital memory preservation and legacy storytelling, including platforms like Kinnect and HereAfter AI, which also use audio and digital archives to document family histories.

According to Afrotech, Oria is now used in over 40 countries and has received further financial support from angel investors and startup initiatives backed by JPMorgan Chase.