The Canadians that founded edtech startup Oohlala Mobile (now Ready Education) have a new startup they say will automate grunt work at banks and credit unions.
“Our vision is a future where humans and AI work side by side in financial services.”
Danial Jameel, Saris AI
Montréal and San Francisco-based Saris AI announced Thursday a $28.8-million USD ($39.7-million CAD) Series A round led by American firm 8VC, which was started by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Fellow US investors Audacious Ventures, Homebrew, Btech Consortium, and Service Ventures participated in the round, which Saris says will help scale its platform to reach more financial institutions.
“Our vision is a future where humans and AI work side by side in financial services,” Saris CEO and co-founder Danial Jameel said in a statement.
Jameel, as well as Saris co-founders Alice Dinu and James Dang, previously founded Montréal-based Oohlala Mobile, which was backed by Y Combinator, GoAhead Ventures, and Real Ventures. The startup later merged with fellow edtech company DubLabs and rebranded to Ready Education.
Now, the team is building AI agents to perform back-office tasks like non-customer-facing admin and support functions at banks and credit unions. The startup says it has partnered with financial institutions including American multinational Fiserv, and California-based MeridianLink.
The startup claims that its agentic workflows (the roadmaps for AI agents to get different tasks done) automate up to 70 percent of consumer, mortgage, and commercial lending tasks, with associated cost reductions of 35 percent.
Canada’s biggest banks, including TD Bank and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) have been investing heavily in AI adoption (RBC was one of Toronto AI company Cohere’s first enterprise customers). A study by consulting firm KPMG found that 90 percent of Canadian financial services leaders now view generative AI as “critical to competitive advantage.”
8VC founding partner Alex Kolicich, who grew up in Canada and attended the University of Waterloo, said Saris’ platform “delivers real, measurable results without disrupting the systems and teams institutions depend on.”
Feature image courtesy Pexels. Photo by Pavel Danilyuk.