Moment Raises $78 Million to Meld AI and Wealth Management

Investment management-focused AI startup Moment has raised $78 million in new funding.

The company’s Series C round, announced Tuesday (May 19), comes as Moment works to advance adoption of its platform, which combines trading, portfolio management and compliance into one operating system.

“Investment management is being rebuilt around AI, and it’s happening at Moment,” said Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures, which led the round.

“Index has backed the financial infrastructure companies that defined the last era of fintech, and the pattern at Moment is unmistakable: the world’s leading wealth firms are betting their next decade on Moment’s team and architecture.”

Companies using Moment’s offering include Edward Jones, LPL Financial and Hightower Advisors, according to the announcement. The startup says its platform powers investment management for firms collectively managing upwards of $10 trillion in assets, up from $300 billion less than 18 months ago.

Among the platform’s capabilities are agents that create custom portfolios from natural-language instructions in seconds, shrinking hours of manual work into one conversation, the release added. Moment also offers “surveillance agents” to scan thousands of accounts to find tax, risk, and transition opportunities and “translate them into actionable proposals.”

The new funding comes less than a year after Moment raised $36 million in a Series B round, also led by Index Ventures.

“The largest financial institutions know they need to deploy agents, but the infrastructure to deploy them safely and effectively hasn’t existed,” said Dylan Parker, Moment’s co-founder and chief executive.

“We built that operating system from the ground up, with a unified data model and regulatory-grade controls so AI can finally do real work in investment management. And because the platform is modular, firms can start by modernizing a few core workflows and progressively unlock AI capabilities as their governance frameworks evolve.”

In related news, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that there are limits to what people will allow AI to do when it comes to their finances.

“Consumers may be comfortable using AI assistants to review subscriptions or summarize spending categories,” PYMNTS wrote. “Giving autonomous systems authority to move money, authorize transactions or execute financial actions presents a different level of risk.”

Only around 20% of consumers would permit an autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agent to manage banking activity on their behalf, according to PYMNTS Intelligence data. The hesitation reflects larger concerns around unauthorized access, misuse of data and the concentration of sensitive financial information with conversational platforms.