Another Chicago-area artificial intelligence-based startup has landed new funding to begin 2024.
Alphathena, a direct indexing platform for registered investment advisors (RIAs), announced a $4 million funding round on Thursday, led by London-based global venture capital firm ETFS Capital, with participation from local early-stage investor Hyde Park Angels.
The Warrenville-based startup launched to make investing a more level playing field. By giving RIAs a platform to build and optimize customized investment strategies, Alphathena hopes to provide more advisors with personalized strategy and investment tools to change the way they can manage their clients' portfolios.
The recent investment will be used to advance product development and widen the platform's customer base.
The personalized investing platform also won the "Best in Show" award at the 2023 Morningstar Fintech Showcase Conference.
The investment comes as U.S. investors directed only $170.6 billion to startups in 2023, down 30% from 2022, according to recent PitchBook data. Crunchbase data shows an even steeper decline in 2023 — at 38% year-over-year — with early-stage funding down more than 40%. Artificial intelligence investing trended in the other direction, however.
Global funding to AI startups, however, reached nearly $50 billion in 2023, up 9% from the $45.8 billion invested in 2022, according to Crunchbase.
PitchBook likewise found that companies with strong financials operating in verticals such as AI, life sciences and clean technology continue to attract significant capital.
At $62.6 billion, AI and machine learning deal activity made up nearly 37% of the total $170.6 billion VCs invested in startups in 2023, according to PitchBook. That's up significantly compared to 2019 to 2022, when the percentage ranged from 21% to 23%.
Alphathena is the first strategic investment ETFS Capital has made in the past two years.
