Vise raises $14.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate AI technology adoption among independent advisors

Vise, a New York City-based fintech startup that automates investment management for financial advisors using artificial intelligence, has closed $14.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate AI technology adoption among independent advisors. The round, which brings the total capital raised to over $16 million, was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from previous investors Founders Fund, Bling Capital, Human Capital, Lachy Groom, Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube and Jon Xu, co-founder of FutureAdvisor.

Founded in 2016, by Samir Vasavada and Runik Mehrotra, Vise automates investment management for financial advisors using artificial intelligence. Vise harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to build personalized portfolios for financial advisors’ clients. Vise has built a full-stack platform spanning the entire lifecycle of the advisor-client relationship, including designing personalized portfolios for clients, managing portfolios, and providing on-going intelligence. By doing so, Vise helps financial advisors focus on their most valuable resource — their client relationships.

Vise has also assembled a team of Ph.D. researchers and industry veterans from Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bloomberg, Google and Palantir. Vise is already available on the Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade Institutional platforms, representing over $800M in AUM amongst client commitments. Vise will use the funding to accelerate the growth of advisor partnerships and product development.

“Our platform uses AI to build customized portfolios for every client, which saves advisors time and enables them to focus on their superpowers: managing clients and growing their businesses,” said Samir Vasavada, co-founder and CEO of Vise. “Human relationships run the advisory industry, so rather than seeking to replace advisors, Vise harnesses AI to make them even better at their jobs.”

“The registered investment advisor (RIA) landscape is increasingly fragmented as advisors break away from large financial institutions to become independent, and we built Vise to support this new generation of advisor-entrepreneurs,” said Runik Mehrotra, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Vise. “In the same way Shopify enabled artisans to compete against Amazon, or how Airbnb allowed homeowners to launch their own businesses, Vise is giving independent advisers the tools they need to succeed.”

AI continues to make inroads across the financial services sector, but most of the $84T wealth management industry, which has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 8.2% since 2001, still runs on legacy software. Vise is designed to fill that gap. Powered by cutting edge natural language processing, Vise builds customized portfolios for every client and helps advisors tell a compelling story to their clients with key talking points, including the “why” behind portfolio decisions.

“Vise enters the RIA space at a critical time for the wealth management industry,” said Keith Rabois, partner at Founders Fund. “Whereas actively managed mutual funds and robo-advisors are both struggling to provide competitive risk-adjusted returns and sufficient downside protection, Vise was designed to help advisors thrive amid volatility and uncertainty.”

“Rarely have I met founders as talented as Samir and Runik, and never with tailwinds as compelling as with Vise,” said Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia. “This is one of the biggest markets on Earth currently being revolutionized by the perfect storm of consumers pushing for more personalization, advisors seeking advanced technology so they can be even better at their jobs, and the industry moving towards zero-commission trades. This creates an opportunity to rethink decades of institutional wisdom and puts them in a prime position to be the central nervous system of the wealth management industry.”