A Boulder startup that uses artificial intelligence to scour "hundreds of millions of documents" for financial market insights said Tuesday that it has raised $6 million in seed funding.
Co-founded by two Boulder-based entrepreneurs, Brightwave said the financial services industry has grown increasingly interested in new AI technology in just four months of doing business.
The startup's customer base now has assets under management that total more than $120 billion, Brightwave said in a news release. Customer types range from owner-operated registered investment advisors to crossover hedge funds, the company said.
“We believe that Brightwave’s approach could represent a significant leap forward for financial research,” said Sugam Sarin, partner at one of the backing firms, Point72 Ventures, in a statement.
In addition to venture capital firms, Brightwave's angel investors include executives from OpenAI, Uber and LinkedIn, according to the release. The round was led by Decibel Partners, with backing from Point72 Ventures and Moonfire Ventures.
Brightwave builds and trains AI systems that sift through documents like news reports, regulatory filings, earnings call transcripts and market data to offer financial market insights to investment managers both large and small.
Investment research teams at large firms use the technology to quickly learn about new sectors as they seek investment opportunities, Brightwave said, while wealth managers can use it to offer more nuanced and insightful market advice to clients.
“Most firms in this market don’t have the capacity to have large in-house research teams, and often struggle to keep up with everything happening in the markets in a thoughtful way. Traditional software hasn’t filled this gap, as it lacks the flexibility to serve the diverse range of industry players effectively,” said Alessio Fanelli, a partner at Decibel, in a statement.
Mike Conover, co-Founder and CEO of Brightwave, said in a statement that the bodies of information processed by the company's system "exceed the limits of human cognition.”
“Artificial intelligence is a force multiplier for financial professionals, and Brightwave is explicitly designed to act as a partner in thought," Conover said.
He added that users of the technology also have the ability to direct the attention of an AI assistant.
Prior to founding Brightwave, Conover established and led open source language model engineering efforts at San Francisco-based data analysis company Databricks, according to the release. Co-founder Brandon Kotara is the former CTO of LedgerX, a federally-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse that matches and clears trades for some of the largest institutional asset managers in the world.
Kotara said in a LinkedIn post that this funding round will allow the company to "accelerate our progress, explore new opportunities, and drive meaningful growth."
Conover added in a LinkedIn post that the company is "hiring across diverse roles" as the business accelerates. According to the release, Brightwave is dually headquartered in Boulder and New York City.
"Brightwave is on a mission to transform the way humans understand the world, starting with the global financial system," Conover said in the post.
