Boosted.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for the investment sector, has closed an $11.2 million CAD ($8 million USD) Series A. This round brings Boosted.ai’s total funding to date to $15.4 million CAD.
“Our mission is to bring elements of quantitative management to the finance industry at large.”
The round was led by Toronto-based FinTech investor Portag3 Ventures and received participation from Dunamu & Partners and Polar Equity Partners. Boosted.ai will use the funding to enhance its Boosted Insights platform, which is aimed to help portfolio managers, analysts, and chief investment officers optimize their investment processes and manage risks.
Headquartered in Toronto and New York, Boosted.ai will also use the investment to hire talent in those cities as well as improve the company’s marketing and sales processes. Under the terms of the investment, Adam Felesky, CEO of Portag3 Ventures, has joined Boosted.ai’s board of directors.
“According to the CFA Institute, there are five main hurdles to using artificial intelligence within investment management: cost, talent, technology, vision, and time. Boosted Insights solves all five hurdles for managers,” said Joshua Pantony, CEO of Boosted.ai. “Our mission is to bring elements of quantitative management to the finance industry at large as data becomes the difference between winning and losing for investors globally.”
Boosted Insights is an AI platform for investment professionals. Its offering was designed to support idea generation, portfolio construction, and portfolio monitoring without requiring users to be data scientists. The platform is also intended to help investment professionals find value in alternative datasets that would usually require substantial quantitative experience to unlock.
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The startup was co-founded in 2017 by Pantony, Jon Dorando, and Nicholas Abe. Boosted.ai currently has more than a dozen active clients, including mutual funds, hedge funds, family offices, and the investment arms of commercial banks. Its clients’ total assets under management are in excess of $500 billion, the company said.
Portag3 Ventures was launched by Power Corporation in 2016. The firm’s launch was led by Paul Desmarais III, senior vice president of Power Corporation and Power Financial, who currently serves as executive chairman of Portag3. Portag3 Ventures closed its second fund at $427 million CAD in December, making it the largest FinTech-focused venture capital fund in Canada.
“Quantitative overlays, factors and stand-alone strategies are no longer options for the investment management industry, they are a requirement to compete,” said Felesky. “The challenge the industry faces is systematically and efficiently implementing them, alongside unique data sources, to stay ahead of the competition.”
“The Boosted.ai platform enables asset managers of any sophistication to do this by tapping into the most advanced machine learning tools available, augmenting their existing investment process through a user-friendly interface that does not require coding expertise,” Felesky added.
Image source Unsplash. Photo by Tyler Franta.