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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
The new offering for financial institutions enables users to monitor recurring payments and make real-time changes from within their banking app.
Atomic most recently demoed its technology earlier this month at FinovateSpring in San Francisco.
Payroll connectivity innovator Atomicunveiled its latest offering: PayLink Manage. The new solution is an actionable subscription management tool for financial institutions that enables users to monitor recurring payments and make real-time changes from within their banking app.
“By integrating PayLink Manage, banks can not only improve their service offerings and increase engagement, but also can solidify themselves as the primary banking relationship,” Atomic CEO and Co-Founder Jordan Wright said. “When banks help their account holders with innovative insights that are actionable, everybody wins.”
PayLink centralizes and automates oversight and control of recurring payments. Users can connect, view, and track a variety of payment types from subscriptions and bills to streaming services and mortgage payments. PayLink Manage also enables users to make real-time changes to their subscriptions directly within the banking app. Additionally, courtesy of Atomic’s direct connectivity, financial institutions can gain insights into usage data, itemized receipts, and other key subscription information. This facilitates deeper analysis, driving more personalized guidance that helps users save money.
“PayLink leverages Atomic’s proven technology, which has already facilitated millions of secure connections across financial platforms,” Atomic Chief Product Officer Andrea Martone said. “With this launch, we are extending our trusted, robust connectivity framework to subscription management, providing financial institutions with a tool to enhance customer engagement and improve retention by helping people take action to improve their financial outcomes.”
Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Atomic made its most recent Finovate appearance earlier this month at FinovateSpring in San Francisco. At the conference, the company demoed its subscription management technology, which leverages its access to payroll, HRIS systems, and merchants to support a range of financial services, including direct deposit switching, income and employment verification, and more. Founded in 2019, Atomic has raised more than $68 million in funding from investors, including ATX Venture Partners and Portage Ventures.
Embedded finance and digital banking solutions provider Finotta has announced a strategic partnership with Constellation Digital Partners (Constellation).
Constellation will integrate Finotta’s Personified platform into its own solution to help credit unions offer personalized financial guidance to their members.
Finotta made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York.
Embedded finance and digital banking solutions provider Finottaforged a strategic partnership with Constellation Digital Partners (Constellation). A cloud-native digital banking services provider, Constellation will integrate Finotta’s Personified platform into its own solution to give credit unions new resources to boost member engagement and satisfaction, as well as drive digital growth.
“More than 90% of consumers expect their financial institution to offer a modern digital banking platform, but this is table stakes,” Finotta Founder and CEO Parker Graham said. “The key is differentiating the experience based on what members need and want, which is financial guidance. Unfortunately, this is also where massive missteps are made. Many traditional PFMs inadvertently shame consumers for poor financial habits rather than encourage positive behavior, killing the overall experience. As a result engagement is down considerably.”
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, Finotta made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2022 in New York. At the conference, the company demoed Personified, a suite of products that enable FIs to provide personalized financial guidance via their mobile banking apps. Personified helps financial institutions anticipate member and customer needs, increase product conversions, and deliver actionable financial guidance – all in a single solution. The platform helps banks and credit unions leverage the digital channel to generate more revenue, improve financial performance, and boost profitability for members and customers.
Last year, Finotta noted that its Personified platform had increased user engagement compared to other mobile banking apps, with an average use of 13 minutes per month per user. According to Graham, this compares favorably to the “less than one minute per month” that users spend on the average mobile banking app. Not only does this reflect a significant lack of engagement from users, it also limits the FIs ability to cross-sell other products and services. Finotta also pointed to a study from Oracle that suggested as much as 40% of customers believe that independent PFM apps are superior to the offerings provided by most financial institutions.
“Embedded (Finotta’s) technology into our platform will equip credit unions with the tools they need to thrive in the digital age while delivering personalized, seamless, and exceptional service to their members every step of the way,” Constellation SVP and Head of Product Aaron Oplinger said. “We look forward to the value this will bring our industry.”
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Constellation Digital Partners is a leading provider of mobile and digital banking solutions for community-based financial institutions. The company is dedicated to empowering both credit unions and community banks with innovative solutions for mobile banking, online account management, personalized financial insights, and more. The company has raised $17 million in funding via a Series A round completed in 2020. Kris Kovacs is President and CEO.
Ireland-based digital banking and payment solutions provider CR2 has agreed to be acquired by Morocco-based Hightech Payment Systems (HPS).
The transaction will strengthen HPS’s value proposition in French-speaking markets in Africa and help the company expand into English-speaking Africa and Australia.
CR2 made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall 2014 in New York.
Irish digital banking and payment solutions provider CR2 has agreed to be acquired by Morocco’s Hightech Payment Systems (HPS). The move will bolster HPS’s digital banking and payment capabilities and consolidate the company’s status as a leader in the African market, especially in its Francophone regions. The acquisition also will help HPS expand in English-speaking Africa and Australia due to CR2’s strength in these markets. Terms of the acquisition were not immediately available.
“We are pleased to be joining Abdeslam and the team at HPS,” CR2 CEO Fintan Byrne said in a statement. “Together, we share a wealth of experience, a passion for innovation, and a relentless focus on customer success.” Byrne added that the acquisition aligns with CR2’s global expansion goals. “With additional scale comes even more opportunity to invest and innovate. This is an exciting time to be in the digital banking and payments technology sector,” Byrne said.
A Finovate alum for more than a decade, CR2 offers digital banking and payment solutions via its flagship platform, BankWorld. The platform gives more than 90 banks in 50+ countries a comprehensive suite of digital banking, digital wallet, and payment functionalities. HPS will combine CR2’s technology with its PowerCARD suite of payment solutions which is used by 500+ institutions in more than 95 countries. HPS further noted that CR2 will “contribute materially” to its financial bottom line, post-acquisition. CR2 generated revenues of €23.8 million in the 12 months leading up to June 2023.
“Today marks a significant milestone in the continued growth of HPS,” HPS Co-Founder and CEO Abdeslam Alaoui Smaili said. “CR2 has a differentiated and exciting capability set, which is a strong fit for HPS and adds significant depth and breadth to our platform.”
Founded in 1995, HPS is a multinational corporation that provides payment software and solutions for issuers, acquirers, card processors, independent sales organizations (ISOs), retailers, mobile network operators (MNOs), and more. HPS is headquartered in Casablanca, Morocco, and has been a member of the Casablanca Stock Exchange since 2006.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with offices in Dubai, Jordan, India, and Australia, CR2 most recently demonstrated its technology at FinovateFall 2014 in New York. Earlier this year, the company announced a strategic partnership with U.K.-based core banking and financial solutions provider Fimple.
With neobank Monzo’s big investment and multi-billion dollar valuation on one side and the continued woes of BaaS provider Synapse on the other, “interesting times” continue to characterize the fintech landscape as we slide into the summer months.
Be sure to check our Fintech Rundown all week long for the latest updates and fintech headlines.
Insurtech
Indian insurtech CoverSureraises $4 million in pre-Series A funding in a round led by Enam Holdings.
The demos are done. The votes have been counted. And the people have spoken. After two days of live fintech demos here at FinovateSpring 2024, we are proud to introduce the winners of Best of Show.
Bloom Credit for its technology that helps banks and credit unions offer a deposit retention and credit building tool to their client base.
Cascading AI for its platform that improves efficiency in banks by 30x by automating rote tasks, enabling banks to leverage that step-change in efficiency to grow their top and bottom lines.
Kobalt Labs for its solution that helps fintechs and financial institutions accelerate and strengthen their third-party diligence, leading to faster and safer paths to revenue-generating partnerships and operational efficiency that doesn’t increase headcount.
QuickFi for its technology that enables banks and manufacturers to give their business customers a fully digital, self-service finance experience that’s fast, intuitive, and consistent with how modern business borrowers prefer to do business.
Remynt for its platform that helps creditors achieve higher recoveries and recapture defaulted consumers as customers when their financial position improves.
SAVVI AI for its solution that helps financial services companies step into the age of AI, with faster, more accurate forecasting, without changing their workflow or processes and using their existing teams.
A heartfelt thanks to all of our demoing companies for sharing their latest fintech innovations with our FinovateSpring audience. Be sure to check out the Finovate Podcast featuring Greg Palmer in the weeks to come as he interviews FinovateSpring 2024’s Best of Show winners.
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2024 conferences are below:
This week, Finovate Global looks at recent fintech developments in France.
French start-up Lydiaannounced the launch of a new digital banking brand this week. Named Sumeria, Lydia plans to invest more than €100 million in the new initiative, as well as hire 400 people over the next three years. Sumeria, according to a post on LinkedIn, offers 4% interest and is designed to be a “simple and accessible banking super app.
“We are convinced that technology (cloud, mobile) is not an end in itself, but a way to simplify life, through everyday details,” the company noted in a statement on its website. Arguing that current accounts should be neither “trendy gadgets” nor make users captive to a given app, system, or institution, the company explained: “It should solve a real problem. This is why Lydia’s choices, with Sumeria, are motivated by common sense and its ambition to be universal: for everyone, for everything.”
Lydia’s brand announcement follows a decision by the company to split its digital banking app into two components. Originally launched in 2013 as a P2P payments app, Lydia’s solution scaled, adding more and more financial services features over the years. It was the launch of its Lydia Accounts offering convinced the company that a change was necessary to keep its early adopters – who relied heavily on the P2P service – onboard. The result was to offer the P2P services separately from Lydia’s digital banking proposition through the Lydia Accounts app. The original Lydia app will become Sumeria, with the new features mentioned above – such as stock trading, savings accounts and loans – to be ported to the new banking brand.
Headquartered in Paris, Lydia has raised more than $259 million in funding. The company’s investors include Accel and Echo Street Capital. In addition to the launch of Sumeria, Lydia is also seeking a credit institution license from the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority.
Paris, France-based private wealth management startup RockFiraised €3 million in funding this week. The round was led by Varsity I and featured the participation of numerous business angels in technology and private management. The company plans to use the capital to grow its workforce by 3x by the end of 2024 so as to provide private banking and wealth management expertise to clients throughout France.
“Since the beginning of the year, we have seen strong client traction eager for a new model to manage their wealth,” RockFi Co-Founder and CEO Pierre Marin said. “With a market of €4.8 trillionin assets ahead of us and no tech leader yet in France and Europe, our ambition is very high for the coming years.”
RockFi’s model combines human expertise and technology to offer services including banking, wealth management, life insurance, and pension savings. The firm has a targetable clientele with assets of more than €100,000, representing six million households in France.
“Three months after our official launch this is an important step that anchors a strong momentum and allows us to further accelerate the construction of the new private management,” the company wrote on its LinkedIn page this week. “The ambition remains: to surround ourselves with the best talent and partners in each field and to deploy a tech ecosystem to unleash the potential of independent wealth managers at the service of their clients.”
Meet Finovate’s French Alums!
Over the years, Finovate has been proud to showcase a number of fintech innovators based in France. Here’s a look at some of French fintechs that have demoed their technology on the Finovate stage in recent years.
Digital identity verification innovator Socure announced a partnership with identity-secured transactions company Proof.
The partnership will combine Proof’s Defend solution with Socure’s Sigma Fraud suite to help companies fight fraud and forgery in authorizations, agreements, contracts, and forms.
Founded in 2012, Socure made its Finovate debut the following year at FinovateFall in New York.
A new partnership between digital identity verification innovator Socure and identity-secured transactions company Proof will bring new tools to the fight against fraud and forgery in authorizations, contracts, and forms.
“With the explosion of new fraud vectors, our mission at Socure remains steadfast: use AI to deliver the most accurate anti-fraud and identity verification solutions in the industry,” Socure Founder and CEO Johnny Ayers said. “Partnering with Proof allows us to uniquely ensure identity-assured transactions for contracts, authorizations, forms, and high-risk financial events across various sectors.”
While there is widespread understanding about threats like money laundering that cost businesses $18 billion every year, the challenge from document fraud is significantly greater. A 2021 report from FINCEN revealed that false records and forgery are responsible for more than $45 billion in fraud activity annually. Fraudsters also have become more effective at leveraging AI to deploy deepfakes, synthetic identities, and – in the case of document fraud – falsified records.
The partnership will blend the strengths of Proof’s Defend solution with Socure’s Sigma Fraud suite. Defend leverages 100+ behavioral, fraud risk signals to detect fraud in online customer interactions. Businesses get a risk score for every transaction that highlights any fraud issues behind the authorization, signature, notarization, or identity verification.
Sigma Fraud analyzes historic behavioral patterns across channels to spot anomalies that may indicate fraudulent activity at the identity level. The suite also is backed by consortium data from the Socure Risk Insights Network, which draws from nearly 2,400 customers from the country’s largest banks, fintechs, payment platforms, and payroll providers.
“Adding Socure’s digital identity verification capabilities to Defend, our fraud detection and prevention product, allows customers to secure transactions at every stage, quickly and accurately,” Proof CEO Pat Kinsel said. “We can’t think of a better partner and are excited to introduce Socure to Defend clients.”
Founded in 2012, Socure made its Finovate debut at FinovateFall a year later. Most recently demoing its technology on the Finovate stage in 2017, Socure has since grown into a leader in digital identity verification with more than 2,300 customers. Last month, the company unveiled its new global watchlist screening and monitoring tool. The solution gives financial institutions the ability to screen, monitor, and assess new and existing customers against the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction lists and politically exposed persons (PEP) databases, adverse media, and custom watchlists.
Socure began the year announcing a pair of new partnerships. In January, the company reported that auto finance company Exeter Finance would deploy the Socure ID+ platform to onboard new customers. In February, Socure teamed up with fellow Finovate alum Trustly to offer a Pay-by-Bank solution with streamlined onboarding.
Identity verification solutions provider Data Zoo secured $22.7 million (AU$35 million) in Series A funding in a round led by Ellerston JAADE.
Data Zoo will use the capital to help foster broader adoption of its identity verification technology.
Headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Data Zoo was founded in 2011. Charlie Minutella is CEO.
International identity verification solutions provider Data Zoohas secured $22.7 million (AU$35 million) in Series A funding. The round was led by Ellerston JAADE, an Ellerston Capital fund; Data Zoo will use the capital to help drive broader adoption of its identity verification technology.
“There’s been a long-standing need for a more efficient and secure way to verify identities,” Data Zoo Founder and Chairman Tony Fitzgibbon said. “Data Zoo has spent years refining its solution – the result has been incredible innovation, UX optimization, and growth in a fiercely competitive market, putting us head-to-head with today’s most established identity providers.”
Data Zoo leverages direct access to authoritative data from more than 170 countries and advanced, logic-driven data sequencing to help institutions automatically verify identities based on the next best source. The company’s technology reduces dropout rates, lowers the total cost of ownership, and helps businesses boost customer approval rates and revenue realization. At the same time, Data Zoo prioritizes data protection and privacy by eliminating identity data storage.
Founded in 2011, Data Zoo is headquartered in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The company includes eToro, MoneyGram, and Experian among its partners, and competes in a crowded field of innovators including a number of Finovate alums such as Socure and Jumio. Earlier this year, Data Zoo announced the appointment of former London Stock Exchange executive Charlie Minutella as its new CEO. In a statement, Minutella spoke about the expansion opportunities this week’s investment will enable the company to pursue.
“Data Zoo is well-positioned to expand its footprint because of its patented ability to efficiently onboard a more diverse and global set of customers, meet compliance standards across jurisdictions, and enhance data privacy and protection,” Minutella said. “The investment from Ellerston JAADE will supercharge our capacity to operate in key markets, attract new business, and enter new strategic partnerships.”
For more coverage of fintech innovation around the world, check out our Finovate Global column published every Friday afternoon.
May is Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage month. And with FinovateSpring less than a week away, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the Asian-American fintech innovators who will be demonstrating their latest technologies on the Finovate stage live in San Francisco, California on May 21 through 23.
Tickets for FinovateSpring are still available. Visit our registration page today and save your spot. We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
A former engineer at Dialpad, Dropbox, and Flexport, Ng is CEO and Co-Founder of Anvil. He is also a graduate of the University of Michigan and an alum of the Y Combinator Startup School Online.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Anvil was founded in 2018.
With experience in angel investments at 79 Studios, as a venture partner at Resolute, and a former I-banker at Chanin & CSFB, Saujin Yi is founder and CEO of LiquidTrust. Yi is a graduate of MIT and earned her MBA from UCLA Anderson, where she is a lecturer.
LiquidTrust was founded in 2019. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
A Venture Partner at JAZZ, Lin seeks to make everyone become “bionic” when it comes to investment research and analysis. Founder and CEO of Revelata, Lin is a graduate of Harvard University, earning his A.B. in Biochemical Sciences, as well as his S.M. and Ph.D. in Computer Science, at the institution.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Revelata was founded in 2020.
Former Head of Operations for Juno Finance and Ownit, Chao is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer with Tennis Finance. Chao earned a B.A. in Economics and Psychology at University of California, Los Angeles.
San Francisco, California-based Tennis Finance was founded in 2022.
Financial crime compliance company Napier AI has partnered with Romania’s Salt Bank.
Salt Bank will deploy Napier AI’s transaction screening solution to protect transactions against a variety of fraud risks.
Napier AI made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2018 in London.
Romania’s first neobank, Salt Bank, has teamed up with financial crime compliance company Napier AI. Salt Bank will deploy Napier AI’s Transaction Screening solution to ensure that the hundreds of millions of transactions Salt Bank handles are safe from fraud risks.
“We chose the Napier AI platform because it offered NextGen technology which enables us to strengthen our financial crime controls and matches our drive to offer clients a seamless digital experience, within a robust regulatory environment,” Salt Bank CEO Gabriela Nistor said.
Salt Bank sought out Napier AI’s technology to ensure that it is able to keep pace with evolving money laundering, terrorist financing, and fraud risks on the one hand, and consumer demand for a seamless digital experience on the other. Napier AI’s Transaction Screening product features a user friendly interface with customizable workflows, a cloud-based deployment, a sandbox environment for optimizing screening configurations, and a configurable dashboard with no-code rule building and AI insights.
“Napier AI’s industry-leading Transaction Screening solution is set to help Salt Bank succeed in setting a new standard for banking in Romania,” Napier AI CEO Greg Watson said. “It is an exciting time for the industry and market, and I am excited to see how we work together to bring best-in-class financial crime compliance to the next generation of digital banking users.”
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, U.K., Napier made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2018. At the conference, the company demoed its Customer Screening and Transaction Monitoring Enhancement software. By addressing gaps in current legacy systems’ AML and client screening solutions – and extending their shelf life – Napier’s technology enables organizations to enhance the performance of their current fraud prevention processes.
Napier AI’s partnership news comes one month after the company teamed up with impact asset manager Finance in Motion. Finance in Motion will deploy Napier AI Continuum – including its Client Screening solution and Client Risk Assessment module – as its AML and counter terrorist financing platform. Earlier this year, Napier AI secured an investment of $56.6 million (£45 million) from Crestline Investors.
“We are excited to work with the Napier AI team and believe their market-leading, AI-powered technology platform is well-positioned to help financial institutions and other regulated companies excel in an environment with rapidly expanding transaction volumes and increasing regulatory requirements,” Crestline Managing Director Will Palmer said when the investment was announced in February.
The week begins with a few research-related announcements in the fintech and financial services space. CB Insights announced the availability of its State of Insurtech report for the first quarter of 2024, and the Federal Reserve Board issued a summary of climate risk resiliences exercises conducted recently by a handful of big banks. While the focus on this column in on the former, the publication of the latter shines some light on potential answers to the problems raised in CB Insights’ report.
With regards to the state of insurtech, there is still a great deal of hesitation among investors. CB Insights noted that quarterly funding for Q1 of this year was only $0.9 billion, the lowest level since 2018. Property & casualty insurtech suffered the most, with a quarter-over-quarter decline of 25%. Q1 2024 was also the first time since 2018 that there were no “mega-round deals” – investments of $100 million or more. There was some good news in Europe, as the number of deals increased slightly, as did the median insurtech deal size. But the overall message continues to be caution when it comes to investor attitudes about investech.
What Ails Insurtech?
Digital disruption: The challenge of digital disruption is one that the insurtechs share with the broader fintech community. The rise of enabling technologies such as AI will both steepen customer expectations as well as accelerate competition between companies to effectively deploy new, innovative solutions.
The insurance business is ripe for innovation. From the massive volume of manual processes and the document-intensive nature of the business to the challenges of underwriting and refining statistical models, the idea that AI will be a powerful ally in the insurance business is a no-brainer. One firm, Zippia, has predicted that as much as 25% of the insurance industry could be automated via AI by 2025.
There are obstacles. The disposition of regulators toward change in the industry is a major concern as new technologies are introduced to enhance operations like underwriting and statistical modeling. A regulatory authority that is indifferent, or hostile, to new technologies or their application in certain use cases can send a powerful signal that innovators are better off deploying their solutions in other industries or other geographies. Looking at the U.S., if the behavior of regulators toward innovators in the crypto space and the Banking-as-a-Service space is any indication, then we can expect to see insurtech and their investors to tread cautiously.
There are also challenges with regard to talent. Now that almost every company in every industry is looking to up their AI game, the fight over top talent in AI and automation has become all the more competitive.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that AI promises to revolutionize many key processes that insurers rely on. And as those processes become more efficient – and as those companies best exploiting those AI-enhanced processes take greater market share – it is easy to see investment dollars returning to insurtech as investors begin making their bets on winners and losers in the space.
Climate change: The impact of climate change is another instance in which challenge and opportunity go hand-in-hand for insurtechs. The growing incidents of extreme weather – from temperature extremes to increasingly powerful hurricanes, floods, and other phenomena – have put a major strain on both property and casualty (P&C) insurers as well as those homeowners and individuals who rely on their protection. Note that CB Insights reported the biggest quarterly drop in funding this year was among P&C insurtechs. And of the top 10 P&C insurtech deals of Q1 2024, only three were U.S. based companies.
While many fintechs involved in climate change and sustainability have focused on helping businesses and institutions measure and better manage their carbon footprints, there is a need for technology companies in the insurance space that can help these firms build the models they need to better anticipate climate change-related risk. I mentioned the Federal Reserve report on climate resiliency earlier. The Fed’s report was a summary of an exploratory pilot Climate Scenario Analysis (CSA) exercise held by six U.S. banks: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Among the conclusions that are especially relevant to this conversation were these two:
The role of insurance in mitigating climate change risks for consumers, businesses, and banks was emphasized, with a call to monitor changes in insurance costs and their impacts on specific markets and segments.
and
Participants expressed the high uncertainty and difficulty in measuring climate-related risks, making it challenging to incorporate them into risk management frameworks on a routine basis.
Insurtechs – and fintechs, for that matter – who are able to help financial institutions resolve these two issues, will find their services in demand as companies seek ways to quantify their own exposure to climate change risk. It is easy to envision other enabling technologies, such as quantum computing, also playing a part. Together, they could provide the kind of powerful modeling that would accurately gauge the risks of climate change and its potential impact on markets, communities, businesses, and families alike.
AI integration specialist AI Squared acquired open-source Reverse ETL (rETL) company, Multiwoven. Terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition follows AI Squared’s $13.8 million Series A funding round in April.
AI Squared made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023.
AI integration platform AI Squared has acquired open-source Reverse ETL (rETL) company Multiwoven. The transaction fortifies AI Squared’s ability to help organizations more easily move data and AI-based insights into business applications.
In a statement, AI Squared Founder and CEO Benjamin Harvey praised both Multiwoven’s technology as well as its open-source approach to innovation. “From my experiences as a data-science executive at the National Security Agency and as an early employee at Databricks, I recognize and respect the critical role that the open-source community plays in fueling innovation,” Harvey said. “Now as a singular organization, AI Squared and Multiwoven will continue to lead the way in open-source rETL, while simultaneously bringing critical data-movement functionality to our customers.”
Multiwoven is an open-source, reverse ETL platform that facilitates secure data segmentation, synchronization, and activation. The company’s technology makes it easier for firms to deploy this organized data into applications and business tools for sales, marketing, and advertising operations. By integrating Multiwoven’s rETL capabilities into its platform, AI Squared will be able to help organizations efficiently integrate robust data and AI insights into their applications.
“With our new combined team, we will be able to accelerate the development and growth of Multiwoven open-source, which will remain free to use,” Multiwoven Co-Founder and CEO Sojoy Golan said. “We are also excited to now introduce advanced capabilities to activate AI/ML data, together with AI Squared.”
AI Squared also will continue to support development of Multiwoven’s open-source technology. Golan called open-source “a wonderful enabler” that has helped uncover insights not only for Multiwoven’s own users and open-source contributors, but also for “the data practitioners on our Community Slack, and all the other generous people in the open-source community.” As part of the transaction, Multiwoven’s team will join AI Squared. Golan has been named Chief Product Officer; Multiwoven Co-Founders Nagendra Dhanakeerthi and Subin Thattaparambil will serve as Chief Technology Officer and SVP of Engineering, respectively.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., AI Squared made its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2023 and returned to the Finovate stage later that year for FinovateFall in New York. In its most recent appearance, AI Squared demonstrated how adding Generative AI to the platform’s Predictive AI capabilities enables users to build tools such as chatbots to help them more efficiently query their data.
AI Squared was founded in 2019. Learn more about the company in our feature interview with AI Squared’s Benjamin Harvey.
