FinTech news in artificial intelligence category
According to Amex, the initial solution will leverage machine learning and AI to automate expense reporting and approvals.
Akros Technologies wants to disrupt the current asset management industry via its AI-driven asset management software platform that mines market data for stocks. The outfit aims to maximize the finance management performance of data-driven ETFs and offer a portfolio management solution via the PMaaS for Akros’s users to help them compete with global ETF institutions like Vanguard or JPMorgan. To build a slew of investment strategies that lower the cost of portfolio modeling and generate scores of investment portfolios, Akros applies a generative AI model based on a decision transformer, which predicts future actions through the sequencing model, Chung said, adding the company also employs GPT-3 natural language processing (NLP) to analyze unstructured language data. The latest funding, which brings Akros’s total amount raised to $6.1 million since its 2021 inception, will help Akros to scale its software platform and asset management products and ramp up its users, including local and global financial institutions and fintech companies.
In the latest development, EQT — the private equity and venture firm based out of Stockholm — is announcing that it has closed a €2.2 billion ($2.2 billion) fund for EQT Growth, which it will be using for investing in European and Israeli founders and startups in areas like enterprise, consumer, health and climate tech, with typical rounds ranging between €50 million and €200 million. Sovereign wealth funds may well be playing a big part here: they have more generally been proving to be strong forces in offsetting current declines, betting when the market is low, with the Saudi state fund recently investing some $7 billion in U.S. stocks; and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, currently the biggest in the world, also still looking bullish.) This is the first fund EQT Growth has raised specifically for tech investments, Brochado added, and it stands as one of the biggest first-time growth funds in Europe to date. The fact that the IPO market very much remains closed for the moment gives a company like EQT a foot in the door for providing finance to companies that might have otherwise looked at that kind of exit, either to position themselves as consolidators, or simply to keep scaling on their own steam, at a time when money is harder to come by, and thus needing to be treated more carefully than before.
The idea of corporate gifting to maintain client relationships isn’t a novel concept. In fact, there’s a cottage industry of “gifting-as-a-service” startups that promise to streamline the task, ranging from companies such as Reachdesk and &Open to Sendoso and Goody. Vendors claim their industry is a profitable one (worth an estimated $258 billion) because the \[…\]
Pow, who worked at Ox Labs, a decentralized exchange protocol builder, and his co-founder Hongzi Mao, a computer science Ph.D. from MIT, have created a desktop tool that uses machine learning algorithms to turn still avatars into motion-tracked ones. Available as a Chrome extension, Hologram swaps out Pow’s real video feed with the cat avatar.
In April, China’s top financial industry associations proposed that NFTs must not be used for securitization; nor should they be traded with cryptocurrencies, which have been outlawed in the country.
Ozark less-than-satisfactory experience with existing financial compliance software led him and Madhu G. Nadig to co-launch Flagright. Ozkan is the founder of Flagright, a startup that aims to prevent financial crime, like money laundering or terrorist financing, with an API-first product.
A Ukrainian deeptech startup is launching a charity NFT project to sell AI-generated artworks with the twin goal of raising money to support people affected by Russia war of aggression and also — it hopes — keep attention locked on the conflict as it approaches its fourth month, with many in the country concerned that the world’s focus is flagging.
Represas notes that Able’s focus on the tech that is used for processing, but not decision-making or risk-profiling (which Represas told me is just a small aspect of loan approval and not where the pain point is); the fact that it focuses on commercial loans and not SMB loans (too small an opportunity, he said); and that it does not directly interface with borrowers itself but works through banks I write that it is launching into the wider market because although it’s coming out of stealth, Able’s actually been around since 2020, and the customers it’s picked up are already using Able’s technology — which involves RPA, computer vision and other forms of AI to ingest and process data related to loans as part of their evaluation process.
Like other European fintech players like open banking specialists Tink and Truelayer, as well as others in the embedded finance space like 10x and Thought Machine — both of which have raised healthy amounts of funding also from investors that include large financial incumbents.
Doppel indexes NFT data across various blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Flow, and others, and uses models that incorporate keywords and metadata to spot fraud, Tian said.
It works with major brands and companies including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Ford, the CBRE Group and 60% of the Fortune 500, which use Near’s interactive, cloud-based AI platform (branded Allspark) to tap into anonymised, location-based profiles of users based on a trove of information that Near sources and then merges from phones, data partners, carriers and its customers
Since its Series C, the company acquired Qualis, which is focused on bringing private market investments to retail investors, according to Nair — a growing area of interest among wealth managers seeking to provide their clients with differentiated returns from the public markets. The round brings the company’s valuation to $842 million, nearly doubling the $447 million it was valued at after its Series C. Investment manager Franklin Templeton and fintech venture firm Motive Partners joined the latest round as new investors, the company says.
Oriient, which powers the platform that Instacart shoppers use to gather their orders in hundreds of stores in North America, this week announced that it has raised an $11 million Series A round, which brings its total funding to $16 million. The idea behind Oriient, which currently has 35 employees, is to offer an indoor positioning platform that can work without any dedicated hardware, beacons or Wi-Fi to locate you inside an airport, office, store or anywhere else without access to a GPS signal.
Using EvolutionIQ, Vykruta claims that a claims adjuster, who may have hundreds of cases active at a time, can better understand short-term disability, long-term disability, workers comp and property and casualty claims.
After a decade at Alibaba and its fintech affiliate giant Ant Group, Max Ma founded SwooshTransfer in 2021 to facilitate cross-border payments for small- and medium-sized enterprises, as well as individuals such as overseas students, for whom tuition payments are often a hassle.
Demonstrating that there a robust market for contract management solutions, LinkSquares, a company developing intelligent software that helps brands maintain and ink new contracts, today announced that it raised $100 million in Series C financing led by G Squared.
Another relatively new company delivering data analytics to retailers is Black Crow AI, which today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Imaginary Ventures.
After hearing from clients that they want to tap into the capital markets, but find it challenging to rely on banks and credit cards, Rodriguez says the second step of Finally is to unlock a credit opportunity. In 2018, after a career as a network engineer, Rodriguez and his wife, Glennys Rodriguez, began helping small and mid-sized businesses manage their finances, and after joining with Edwin Mejia, founded Finally.
But Jack Kudale, the founder and CEO, tells me that it’s projecting its policy holder base to grow three-fold in the next 12 months, to 35,000-40,000 customers (which would imply something around 17,000-20,000 businesses currently), and that its premium run rate (the insurance industry’s revenue run rate equivalent) has grown 40x this year, to $200 million, in what is still a very nascent market, with less than 10% of small businesses in the country currently taking out cyber insurance policies.
With regard to continued funding into the autonomous retail space, it still seems to be flowing, as evidenced by AiFi and some additional companies, including French convenience store startup Boxy, which announced $28 million in funding a few weeks ago, and Focal Systems, which works with retailers like Walmart.
OkHi’s grand mission, the founder says, is to get these people who don’t have a physical address included in the global address system.
UK-based TrueCircle, a computer vision startup founded just last year, has nabbed $5.5 million in pre-seed funding in a bid to bring data-driven AI to the recycling industry to improve recovery rates and quality — with the overarching goal of transforming the economics of waste reuse to shrink demand for virgin materials.
When customers move money to their wallet via credit card, debit card, or ACH transfer, Sardine assigns a risk score to the card or bank account being used through an algorithm and assumes fraud liability for the transaction.
Identity verification (IDV) provider Veriff, has raised a $100 million Series C round co-led by Tiger Global and Alkeon. He also said he thinks the future of IDV is being driven by the fact that it’s not just essential for financial services companies, but that it’s also now requisite for just about every service online. They were joined by existing investors IVP and Accel, bringing Veriff total funding to date to $200 million. It also claims that last year it grew verification volumes by more than 8x, and by 20x in the U.S., with its financial services operation growing by 10x, while customer growth had grown by 150%.
Vilner says the firm’s name was one he kept hearing over and over, and he and co-founder Danni Friedland were interested in Felicis’ fund for SaaS and software, thinking it would be the right fit. Joining Felicis are existing investors NFX, Eight Roads Ventures and A Capital and a group of strategic angel investors, including Salesforce president and CMO Sarah Franklin, Okta co-founder Frederic Kerrest, TripActions co-founder and CEO Ariel Cohen and Papaya Global co-founder and CEO Eynat Guez. After securing a $15 million Series A in August, Walnut, a company that creates sales and marketing demo experiences, is back to announce its new round of $35 million in Series B financing. Walnut no-code platform enables teams to create customized product demonstrations quickly, be able to integrate them into their sales and marketing processes and then generate insights from the demos. Since the Series A, the company grew a staggering 700% in annual recurring revenue, co-founder and CEO Yoav Vilner told journalist.
Aiming to give merchants more control over this, Seel, which focuses on underwriting e-commerce returns, is leveraging artificial intelligence to build proprietary underwriting software that uses hundreds of signals to predict the probability of return as soon as an order is placed.
Here are 5 NFT trends that will bring social media audiences into web3 en masse: NFT verification Skeptics are quick to point out that NFTs are dumb because you can simply right-click and save the underlying files.