Boosted.ai raises $8 million in Series A funding for its first-to-market AI platform for investment professionals

Investment managers, particularly those running active, fundamental strategies, have been in a state of upheaval for years as a result of broader industry forces. In that timeframe, nice-to-have advanced portfolio management techniques, like big data ingestion, have become mission-critical to success. Enter Boosted.ai, an artificial intelligence startup that allows all portfolio managers and their teams to easily harness the power of machine learning to augment their existing investment processes, source new ideas and manage risks.

Today, Toronto, Canada-based Boosted.ai announced it has closed $8 million Series A financing round to continue enhancing Boosted Insights, its proprietary machine learning platform that empowers portfolio managers, analysts and chief investment officers to augment their existing investment processes, source new ideas and manage risks. The round was led by Portag3 Ventures. Dunamu & Partners and Polar Equity Partners also participated in the round. Inclusive of seed capital, Boosted.ai’s total funding now stands at $11 million.

The funding will also be used to hire additional talent in Toronto and New York City, as well as enhance marketing and sales processes. In conjunction with the funding round, Adam Felesky from Portag3 Ventures has joined Boosted.ai’s Board of Directors.

Co-founded in 2017 by Joshua Pantony, Jon Dorando and Nicholas Abe, Boosted.ai currently has more than a dozen active clients and services the full spectrum of asset managers, including long-only mutual funds, long-short hedge funds, family offices and the investment arms of commercial banks. Combined assets under management managed by the Boosted.ai client base is in excess of $500 billion.

Boosted Insights is a first-to-market AI platform for investment professionals, supporting idea generation, portfolio construction and portfolio monitoring without requiring users to be coders, software engineers or data scientists. The platform also allows investment professionals to find value in alternative datasets that otherwise require extensive quantitative experience to unlock.

“According to the CFA Institute, there are five main hurdles to using artificial intelligence within investment management: cost, talent, technology, vision and time. Boosted Insights solves all five hurdles for managers,” said Joshua Pantony, CEO of Boosted.ai. “Our mission is to bring elements of quantitative management to the finance industry at large as data becomes the difference between winning and losing for investors globally.”

“Quantitative overlays, factors and stand-alone strategies are no longer options for the investment management industry – they are a requirement to compete. The challenge the industry faces is systematically and efficiently implementing them, alongside unique data sources, to stay ahead of the competition,” said Adam Felesky, CEO of Portag3 Ventures. “The Boosted.ai platform enables asset managers of any sophistication to do this by tapping into the most advanced machine learning tools available, augmenting their existing investment process through a user-friendly interface that does not require coding expertise.”