Participated · Equity · Mar 2023

Stratyfy builds machine learning and AI-driven decisioning solutions for financial institutions. Its platform helps automate credit risk assessment, fraud detection, bias mitigation and other complex operational tasks while aiming to avoid new operational or regulatory risks. Stratyfy combines automated data evaluation with human oversight to help institutions serve more customers without bias or unnecessary risk. Led by CEO Laura Kornhauser, the company works with banks and financial institutions to implement these solutions. The company raised $10M in a funding round to accelerate innovation and address challenges financial institutions face when adopting AI-driven decision-making. Stratyfy is based in New York.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2022

Banyan operates a SKU-level purchase data database and platform that ingests first-party receipt and transaction data from merchants to power use cases such as expense management, card-linked offers, fraud prevention and targeted loyalty programs. The company emphasizes privacy by sourcing data directly from merchants and minimizing collection of personal information. Banyan says its network includes over 35,000 merchant partners and that it has processed billions of transactions and receipts; it declined to disclose revenue or customer-count details. The new capital will be used for product research and development, infrastructure growth and to expand headcount from 46 employees to about 50 by year-end. CEO Jehan Luth, who founded the company in 2019, positions Banyan as a standards-and-integration layer that removes the need for screen scraping or manual receipt capture. The company aims to enable financial institutions to deliver personalized digital experiences while helping merchants drive targeted offers and manage inventory more efficiently.

Led · Series C · Aug 2022

Kasisto builds KAI, a conversational and generative AI platform for the financial services industry. The platform includes virtual assistants and KAI Answers, which gives employees immediate access to accurate information drawn from an institution’s knowledge base. KAI Answers enables virtual assistants to leverage generative AI to produce precise responses from internal and public-facing documents, streamlining customer service and reducing time to locate critical data. Kasisto’s customers include global banks such as J.P. Morgan, Westpac, Standard Chartered, TD, and Nedbank, as well as U.S. community banks and credit unions. The company says the platform is engaging millions of consumers worldwide across multiple channels and languages and is optimized for performance, scalability, security, and compliance. Kasisto recently closed a Series D that brings total funding to $90 million and appointed Don Layden as Executive Chairman; it plans to use the capital and strengthened leadership to accelerate innovation, expand market presence, and further integrate conversational and generative AI to help frontline bankers and operational staff. Kasisto offers KAI, a digital experience platform integrated into the fintech ecosystem through partnerships with providers such as FIS, NCR and Q2. The company serves customers including J.P. Morgan, Westpac, Standard Chartered, TD, Manulife Bank and credit unions like Fairwinds and Excite. Kasisto plans to use new funding to continue investing in product development, strategic go-to-market initiatives, and to expand partnerships with top financial services providers. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Zor Gorelov. Kasisto is NYC-based and also has offices in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Recent financing activity indicates ongoing external investor support for its platform and partnerships. Kasisto develops KAI, a conversational AI-powered digital experience platform for financial services firms. Led by CEO Zor Gorelov, the platform is built to engage millions of consumers worldwide across multiple channels and languages and is optimized for performance, scalability, security, and compliance. Customers named in the article include J.P. Morgan, Westpac, Standard Chartered, TD, Manulife Bank and credit unions such as Fairwinds and Excite. The company closed a $15.5M Series C round, bringing total funding to date to $67M. In conjunction with the round, Mike Abbaei, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Naples Technology Ventures, will join Kasisto’s board. Kasisto intends to use the funds to accelerate growth with investments in sales, business development, marketing, strategy and customer success. The company is based in New York City and also has offices in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Kasisto provides a digital experience platform for the financial services industry, engaging with millions of consumers around the world across multiple channels and languages. The platform is optimized for performance, scalability, security, and compliance. The company plans to use proceeds from the recent investment to expand its global field organization and accelerate its go-to-market strategy. Kasisto received a $7M investment from Napier Park Financial Partners as part of a Series B extension that brought the round's total to $22M. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Zor Gorelov, Kasisto is NYC-based with offices in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Customers include DBS Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Mastercard, Standard Chartered, TD, and Manulife Bank. Kasisto develops KAI, an open conversational AI platform trained in the language of banking and finance to power human-like virtual assistants for financial institutions. KAI includes enterprise tools to customize, measure, train, and improve virtual assistants and meets the needs of demanding financial services organizations. The company reports global production deployments of its intelligent virtual assistants in more banks than any other company. Customers include J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Standard Chartered, TD, and DBS. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Zor Gorelov, Kasisto is based in New York City and also has offices in Silicon Valley and Singapore. The company intends to use new funding to expand adoption of its services across all segments of the financial services industry.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2022

Prime Trust operates a suite of backend fintech and crypto infrastructure products that cover onboarding (AML/KYC/rails), monetization (trading and custody) and liquidity (IRAs and trading-related products). The company serves roughly 700 customers across exchanges, on-ramps, wallet apps, ATSs, RIAs, broker-dealers and banks and has grown its headcount to about 400. It plans to use new funding to launch a crypto-focused IRA retirement account, wealth-management offerings and crypto staking products, and to enhance support for tokenized products such as NFTs. Prime Trust is also investing in security and scalability improvements, including a new cloud architecture. The firm positions itself as a broad “one-stop-shop” backend provider for institutional clients that can pick and choose platform components. Prime Trust offers payment, settlement, KYC and liquidity APIs that management says cover the “full infrastructure stack” for neo-banks, crypto exchanges and other fintechs. The platform handles roughly 250 million API calls per month from clients including Binance.US, Kraken, Bittrex and Strike. Prime Trust has grown 448% year over year and is projecting an annual revenue run rate of $100 million; revenue has doubled every year since its custody wing launched in 2017. The company says its APIs are a central, “plug-and-play” part of the business and driver of client activity. With the new funding, Prime Trust plans an aggressive hiring campaign and to add systems to expand services beyond crypto into broader fintech use cases and alternative investments via tie-ups with neo-banks and registered investment advisors. Management intends the capital to support scaling across the organization as demand for its infrastructure grows.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2021

The article identifies New York Digital Investment Group LLC as an investment group that completed a major financing event. The article does not describe the company’s core product or specific business lines. On December 14, 2021 the company raised $1 billion in an equity round led by WestCap Management, LLC. The transaction included participation from Deer Management Company, LLC; FinTech Collective, Inc.; Affirm Holdings, Inc.; Fidelity National Information Services, Inc.; Fiserv, Inc.; Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company; Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Investment Arm; and New York Life Insurance Company. The round was raised at a post-money valuation of $7 billion. The article does not provide revenue, user metrics, or detailed future plans. Nydig is a New York City–based provider of technology and investment solutions for Bitcoin. It provides Bitcoin investment and technology solutions to insurers, banks, corporations, institutions, and high-net-worth individuals. The company operates an institutional custody platform that it says facilitates and holds more than $1 billion of direct and indirect bitcoin exposure owned by insurers. Nydig raised $200m in growth funding and intends to use the proceeds to expand its business reach. Leadership includes co-founder and CEO Robert Gutmann and founder and Executive Chairman Ross Stevens. NYDIG provides institutional investment, brokerage, treasury, and technology solutions for Bitcoin, including insured custody, execution, asset management, financing, and AML/KYC services. Its core product is a secure, audited, and insured custody platform that holds client Bitcoin positions and underpins bespoke white‑label implementations for large financial institutions. The firm is accelerating its white‑label business segment to deliver custody, execution, financing, and compliance capabilities to banks and institutional clients. NYDIG reports over $2.3 billion of digital asset balances under custody and recently facilitated a $100 million Bitcoin purchase for a major insurer. That insurer, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), also made a $5 million minority equity investment in NYDIG. Founded in 2017 as the digital-asset subsidiary of Stone Ridge Holdings Group, NYDIG's subsidiaries hold a BitLicense and a limited-purpose trust charter. NYDIG provides investment, brokerage, treasury, and technology solutions for Bitcoin and other digital assets to institutional allocators, corporations, banks, investment advisers, and high-net-worth individuals. The firm offers insured custody, execution, asset management, financing, AML/KYC, and partners with banks and philanthropies to deliver these capabilities to their customers and donors. NYDIG reports that its custody, asset management, and financing balances exceed $1 billion in aggregate and that its client base quadrupled this year. Founded in 2017 as the digital-asset subsidiary of Stone Ridge, NYDIG operates under regulatory frameworks with subsidiaries holding a BitLicense and a limited-purpose trust charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services. The company executed and custodied a parent-company purchase of more than 10,000 BTC (over $100M) as part of Stone Ridge Holdings Group’s treasury reserve strategy. Management says demand for corporate treasury and institutional Bitcoin solutions is accelerating and the firm intends to expand those offerings.