by New York City-based WealthFeed, an AI-driven lead generation tool for advisors, has raised $2 million in funding from Thicket Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Justin Wisz, the former CEO and co-founder of Vestorly. Executives from the RIA, investment banking and private equity sectors have also invested, including Joe Jolson, chairman and CEO of the San Francisco-based JMP Group.
Wisz and Jolson will join WealthFeed’s board of directors. Wisz co-founded Vestorly, a content marketing engine that he left in 2018 to join venture capital firm RTP Ventures. Vestorly was acquired in 2022 by FMG, a marketing technology company for advisors.
WealthFeed is the financial services spin-off of Catalyze AI, a lead generation platform for real estate agents.
Sam Kendree, co-founder of WealthFeed, said the platform uses proprietary AI technology to aggregate nine real-time money-in-motion data points, including business sales, capital raises, inheritances and job changes. The platform scrapes data from publicly available databases, such as SEC documents and LinkedIn notifications, to identify promising prospects.
WealthFeed launched early last week, and around 50 advisors are currently beta testing it.
The company charges $149 per month per advisor to use the technology. Advisors on the platform can buy additional credits on top of the ones included in the standard monthly fee to unlock more prospects.
TIFIN Hires BlackRock Exec to Lead CIO Platform Sage
Brooke Juniper, former head of digital engagement at BlackRock, has been named CEO of TIFIN’s AI-powered CIO platform, Sage.
Juniper spent the last 16 years at BlackRock, where she co-founded and led the asset manager’s U.S. Wealth Portfolio Solutions group.
Founded by Dr. Vinay Nair, TIFIN began as a startup incubator and holding company with more than a dozen businesses, several of which combined into TIFIN Wealth, a full-scale platform for wealth managers.
TIFIN has invested heavily in AI technology, including Sage, which provides portfolio insights and actionable recommendations for clients and prospects.
The firm also operates Magnifi, a natural language-powered search engine and product marketplace, to help advisors make investment decisions.
In January, TIFIN and Franklin Templeton announced TIFIN @Work, an AI-powered employee financial wellness platform.
In May 2022, TIFIN announced the close of its $109 million Series D funding round.
FusionIQ Names John Phillips a Senior Strategic Advisor
Woburn, Mass.-based FusionIQ has appointed John Phillips as senior strategic advisor. FusionIQ is a financial technology company with a proprietary algorithm for scoring stocks and ETFs. Phillips previously served as executive vice president and head of platform sales for Fidelity Institutional and chief operating officer at Gomez Advisors.
