A former Amazon Alexa scientist has raised $6.5 million for a startup vowing to bring foundational AI to the global investment community.
Unusual Ventures led the round, with participation from Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, and Clocktower Ventures.
UK-based Theia Insights is using AI, machine learning, LLMs and Natural Language Processing to build models based on advanced financial mathematics to "rebuild the infrastructural technologies that underpin the $100 trillion investment industry".
The company is developing three core technologies: dynamic industry classification, thematic risk model and portfolio analysis.
The brainchild of Ye Tian, who has an academic background in NLP and is a former research scientist at Amazon Alexa, Theia has built a team of experts from Nasdaq, Morgan Stanley, Meta, UC Berkeley and the University of Cambridge's Computer Science Department.
Says Tian: “We live in the age of data overflow - everything from geopolitics to financial filings, to social media and news. It’s often overwhelming and easy to get lost in the noise.
"But good investment decisions require clarity, and that is where AI can play an unrivaled role - by lifting us from the valley to the mountain top, so we can choose the paths we want to take by seeing where every path leads and how they connect.”