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Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures

720 East Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI, 53202, United States

Overview

Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures is an investment firm that provides life insurance services. Northwestern Mutual has a 160-year-old track record of industry-leading financial strength, client-centricity and entrepreneurial culture, which has not only enabled but driven us to always innovate for our clients. Plus, we know what it’s like to be a start-up because we have successful entrepreneurs on our team. In 2015, we combined forces with LearnVest through an acquisition that began as a strategic investing partnership.

Total investments
43
Lead investments
5
Investments · 12mo
8
Active investors
1

Sector focus

  • Finance
  • Financial Exchanges
  • Financial Services
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Investment portfolio

  • Levitate

    Participated · Equity · Mar 2026

    Levitate, founded in 2017, offers an AI-driven "Happiness Platform" that lets relationship-oriented businesses send personalized emails at scale, post to social media, text clients, manage reviews, schedule meetings, send handwritten cards, and more. Serving more than 8,000 businesses, the software combines intelligent automation with hands-on coaching to keep firms top-of-mind with clients, donors, and prospects. The company positions its model as "Service-as-Software," pairing technology with strategic guidance to drive measurable marketing outcomes. With a total of $71 million raised to date, Levitate has steadily invested in making AI practical and accessible for small enterprises. The latest funds will accelerate the internal AI roadmap and roll out new customer-facing tools. Levitate also plans to scale its customer success and sales teams across the U.S. and Canada and widen its reach to additional relationship-focused verticals. Overall, the business is leveraging fresh capital to deepen product capabilities while expanding market presence.

  • Letter AI

    Participated · Series B · Feb 2026

    Letter AI is an AI-first platform that unifies content, coaching, learning and buyer engagement to help go-to-market teams close deals more effectively. Instead of relying on static playbooks, the software ingests live CRM data and customer interactions to generate personalized guidance in the flow of a deal. Enterprises such as Lenovo, Adobe, Novo Nordisk, Plaid, Zip, RingCentral, Kong and SolarWinds use the system across more than 30 countries. The company was recently named G2’s Highest Momentum Leader in Sales Enablement and earned 21 badges in the G2 Winter Reports, underscoring strong customer adoption and satisfaction. Headquartered in Chicago, Letter AI was co-founded by CEO Ali Akhtar and CTO Armen Forget. With its latest capital infusion, the firm plans to scale product development, grow its global team and accelerate go-to-market efforts as it positions itself as an AI-native alternative to fragmented legacy tools.

  • Oro

    Participated · Equity · Jan 2026

    Oro operates a comprehensive housing-benefits platform that integrates into employers’ existing benefits stacks and supports employees who rent, plan to buy, or already own homes. Through the system, workers receive concierge housing assistance, rent-to-credit reporting, home-buyer education, down-payment assistance guidance, and referrals covering taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Employers can also fund specific programs—such as help with down payments, closing costs, interest-rate buydowns, or PMI—while tracking measurable ROI on retention and engagement. In a pre-launch pilot, Oro enabled eight employees to become first-time homeowners and now supports more than 1,200 employees on its platform, demonstrating early traction. The company positions “Housing as a Benefit” as the next frontier in employee wellness and retention strategies. Founded by former attorney George Fatheree, Oro is organized as a Delaware public benefit corporation. The newly raised capital will accelerate go-to-market efforts, expand employer adoption, and advance the technology underpinning the platform.

  • Atomic Insights

    Participated · Seed · Jan 2026

    Founded in 2023, Atomic Insights builds a purpose-built treasury platform that centralizes payment requests, automates maker-checker approvals, and connects directly to custodians and banks via real-time APIs. The software bi-directionally integrates with leading wealth-management systems such as Addepar, Arch, Canoe, and Salesforce, eliminating manual data entry and reducing operational risk. Over the past year the company has secured anchor RIA and family-office clients representing more than $75 billion in assets on platform, saving those firms thousands of hours in manual workflows. Atomic acts as the connective tissue across client portals, document vaults, and workflow tools, enabling wealth managers to deliver a scalable "family CFO" experience. The platform also provides a full audit trail and cash-flow reporting from a single workspace. With fresh capital, Atomic plans to deepen its real-time custodial data connections, roll out supplementary products, and further expand within the RIA and family-office ecosystem.

  • Modern Life

    Participated · Series A · Nov 2025

    Modern Life provides a unified, AI-driven platform that lets financial advisors compare quotes from more than 30 carriers, automate underwriting, and manage the entire client lifecycle from a single dashboard. Key features include industry-leading instant quoting that cuts quote generation from hours to minutes and its Express Decision program, which can return underwriting decisions up to four times faster than traditional approaches. The software embeds AI across underwriting, risk assessment, tax and financial planning recommendations, workflow automation, and secure data management, replacing over ten legacy tools. Licensed in all 50 states and SOC 2 certified, the company targets the largely advisor-distributed $175 billion U.S. life-insurance market where 90 % of policies are sold through advisors. Advisors’ clients can save up to 20 % on policy costs through smarter product selection and advocacy enabled by the platform. Financially, Modern Life has raised $35 million to date, including a recently closed $20 million Series A, to accelerate product development, expand strategic partnerships, and fuel nationwide growth.

Team