AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 12/5/25

BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK) and AccessFintech (AFT), a leading data and workflow collaboration network for financial markets, today announced a strategic partnership. Through Aladdin®, BlackRock’s technology platform that unifies the investment management process, the firms will aim to deliver bilateral connectivity and real-time post-trade collaboration between the global buy-side Aladdin platform community, and the 250+ capital markets and asset servicing institutions already connected to AccessFintech’s Synergy Network. 

Sell-side participants and asset servicers gain a powerful new channel to engage with the global network of buy-side firms on the Aladdin platform, enabling faster resolution and prevention of exceptions and providing transparency for better decision-making to improve client outcomes. 

BlackRock has separately made a strategic capital investment in AccessFintech designed to support the company’s next phase of growth, including product innovation, global expansion, and deeper ecosystem integration. The investment reflects a shared commitment to a more connected, data-driven capital markets infrastructure. 

Bonterra, the leader in social good technology, is celebrating this year’s giving season by supporting those who give the most. Through the end of January 2026, all existing, current Network for Good and EveryAction customers will receive free access to Bonterra Que, an AI-powered fundraising companion that helps nonprofits save time, boost giving, and deepen donor engagement during this critical time of year. 

For many organizations, year-end fundraising is mission critical. Nearly 30% of all annual donations happen in December, with billions raised on GivingTuesday alone. Recognizing the immense pressure nonprofits face amid rising demand and shifting funding landscapes, Bonterra is stepping up to help. During GivingTuesday week in 2024, more than $155 million was raised through Bonterra solutions, underscoring the vital role its technology plays in connecting people and causes during the busiest giving period of the year. The company’s “Gift of Que” initiative is designed to empower nonprofit teams with intelligent tools that lighten the load and amplify impact. 

Powered by the Bonterra Network, the largest relational network in social good, Bonterra Que puts AI to work for nonprofits, analyzing data and acting on it so teams can save time, strengthen connections, and boost giving when it matters most. Drawing on this network intelligence, Que delivers deeper insights, broader reach, and smarter actions that drive meaningful impact. 

Cegid, a European leader in cloud software for finance, accounting, HR, and retail software, and Shine, a fast-growing European fintech unicorn providing digital business accounts and payments, e-invoicing, accounting, and payroll software to small businesses across Europe, announced today that the companies have entered a definitive agreement to join forces to form a European champion and become a leading provider of software for businesses and their accountants. 

This transformational combination will create the first fully integrated, cloud-native and AI-driven financial hub for SMBs and accounting professionals in Europe – bringing together market-leading capabilities in e-invoicing, accounting, digital business accounts and payments, tax, HR, and payroll in a single unified platform. 

Shine brings to Cegid more than 400,000 SMB customers, a strong brand, and a highly scalable technology stack, expanding Cegid’s reach in key European markets. Together, the combined company will serve over one million SMBs and 15,000 accountants across France, Germany (DACH), Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium. 

In response to evolving customer expectations and increasing demands on branch operations, Bank of New Hampshire (BNH) has entered into a strategic partnership with Coconut Software, a leading provider of intelligent branch solutions. This collaboration has already delivered measurable results, including a 25% increase in appointment volume, underscoring BNH’s commitment to innovation and exceptional customer service across all lines of business. 

By fully deploying Coconut Software enterprise-wide, Bank of New Hampshire has redefined its service model by streamlining operations, empowering employees, and delivering more personalized experiences at scale—supporting its nearly 200-year commitment to providing the most exceptional customer services possible. 

As customer needs grew more complex—spanning account assistance, retirement planning, and fraud resolution—BNH’s service model revealed opportunities for improvement. Walk-ins disrupted workflows, staffing constraints stretched resources, and customers weren’t always matched with the right advisors or prepared with proper documentation. Rising fraud added further pressure, making consistent scheduling and efficient branch operations increasingly critical. 

Connectbase, the Operating System for transacting in the Connected World, delivering digital infrastructure insights, mapping, quoting, and automation for the global connectivity ecosystem, today announced it has acquired Cloud Age, an industry-leading telecom invoice automation and spend management SaaS platform serving the service provider ecosystem. 

This acquisition extends Connectbase’s reach and reinforces its mission to build the Operating System for Transacting in the Connected World—a unified digital fabric connecting the partnering, buying, selling, and management of the commercial relationships of connectivity, managed services and digital infrastructure at scale. 

In tandem, Equality Asset Management (EAM), a leading growth equity firm, has made a strategic investment in Connectbase to support the Cloud Age acquisition and to drive future growth. 

Conquest Planning Inc. (“Conquest”), a technology platform modernizing financial planning with customized and convenient advice, today implemented its CEO succession plan, naming Chief Revenue Officer Brad Joudrie as CEO, while founding CEO Dr. Mark Evans transitions to an executive chair position. Effective January 1, 2026, Joudrie will become CEO and join the company’s board of directors, with Evans continuing to serve as a board member focused on strategic product vision. 

Since joining Conquest as Chief Revenue Officer in 2019, when the company was pre-revenue, Joudrie has been instrumental in driving its rapid expansion across geographies. Conquest now serves over 60% of the Canadian financial advisor market and has established a growing presence in the U.S. and U.K. The platform supports more than 60,000 advisors across over 1,000 financial institutions—including BMO, BNY Pershing, Manulife, Raymond James and RBC—and has exceeded 2 million financial plans created on its platform. 

Evans, who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, has spent over 35 years developing advisor technology. In 1990, he founded NaviPlan, where he helped architect some of the industry’s leading financial planning software before exiting in 2011. He returned to the space in 2018 with Conquest, an artificial intelligence (“AI”)-powered platform designed to make financial plans more accessible, dynamic and tailored to each individual or family. Together with his co-founders, Evans built Conquest to help advisors improve efficiency, interoperability and scale, offering adaptable plans to investors across the wealth spectrum. 

Ctoph Exchange, a global digital asset trading platform, today announced a major expansion of its technology infrastructure alongside a significant upgrade to its proprietary trading system. As part of this initiative, the platform has established new regional data hubs across multiple international financial centers, strengthening execution efficiency, network resilience, and overall performance for a rapidly expanding global user base. 

The infrastructure upgrade marks a key milestone in Ctoph Exchange’s strategic roadmap to build a high-performance backbone for global digital finance. By deploying low-latency server clusters across several strategically positioned financial regions, the platform now enables faster cross-regional data synchronization and more efficient order execution. 

Initial benchmark tests indicate that the enhanced architecture reduces trade execution latency by up to 60%, delivering near-instant responses for both institutional and retail clients. The upgraded system integrates AI-driven risk control, high-frequency trading optimization, and next-generation matching algorithms, significantly boosting execution precision and platform stability. 

Duck Creek Technologies, the global intelligent solutions provider defining the future of property and casualty (P&C) and general insurance, announces the appointment of Rajesh Raheja as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As CTO, Raheja will lead Duck Creek’s global technology strategy, platform innovation, and engineering organization as the company advances its cloud-native solutions and AI-driven capabilities for insurers worldwide. 

Rajesh brings extensive experience building and delivering market-leading cloud platforms. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President for HPE’s Private Cloud and AI software business, where he delivered a unified control plane strategy and a new virtualization solution by executing on the Morpheus Data acquisition, aimed at high security and regulated industries. Previously, as Chief Engineering Officer & Senior Vice President at Boomi, he scaled global R&D and launched major innovations after executing a $4B private equity carve-out from Dell, supporting significant revenue growth and customer expansion by elevating the platform’s AI, data, API, security and reliability to industry-best levels. 

Before Boomi, Raheja was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Broadcom (CA Technologies), driving modernization and expansion for the Layer7 API Management portfolio. Earlier in his career at Oracle, he held leadership roles building new product and cloud services, and led the transformation of on-premises integration technologies into scalable, enterprise-grade public cloud services. 

Element Fleet Management Corp. (TSX: EFN) (“Element” or the “Company”), the largest publicly traded, pure-play automotive fleet manager in the world, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Car IQ, a San Francisco–based technology company and pioneer in connected vehicle payments. 

The acquisition brings to market the first vehicle-initiated payments technology embedded directly into a full-suite fleet management ecosystem. It also enables Element to offer clients access to its full suite of connected mobility, data, and fleet management solutions, integrated with digital payments capabilities. Car IQ will operate as a subsidiary of Element Mobility and immediately expand Element’s digital payments roadmap across the United States and Canada. 

Car IQ’s technology enables vehicles to autonomously initiate, authenticate, and complete transactions with merchants, eliminating physical cards, PINs, and manual reconciliation. Integrating this capability into Element’s platform will provide our clients with stronger controls, reduced fraud exposure, real-time spend visibility, and materially simplified operations. 

GNOMI, the AI platform redefining how people access and act on real-time information, today unveiled Finance Mode – the first agentic AI experience for live, multilingual global market coverage. The system lets users join earnings calls as they happen, access instant transcripts, and receive conversational insights across more than 50 markets. By combining live data, generative reasoning, and natural dialogue, GNOMI brings institutional-grade market intelligence to everyone. 

Finance Mode doesn’t just show the numbers; it interprets them. Powered by GNOMI’s agentic AI, it listens to live earnings calls, analyzes market sentiment, and connects macro events in real time. The result is clear, contextual insight that helps users act faster – without spreadsheets, dashboards, or noise. 

Finance Mode isn’t just a feature – it’s the next layer of GNOMI’s core intelligence. The company’s AI News Agent redefines how global news is understood, and now, Finance Mode extends that mission to markets. By combining multilingual comprehension, verified sourcing, and real-time reasoning, GNOMI turns complexity into clarity – giving retail investors and professionals a conversational way to interpret the world’s financial pulse. Through partnerships with Quartr, Fiscal.ai, TakoViz, FMP, and ElevenLabs, GNOMI integrates live audio, verified data, and generative reasoning – delivering the first AI news agent that thinks like a financial strategist. 

GReminders, a leading end-to-end meeting and automation management platform for financial advisors, announces the launch of AI Document Access, a significant enhancement to its flagship Do Anything Assistant. This industry-first innovation makes GReminders the only provider to enable compliant, intelligent AI-driven access to documents directly within their workflows, turning static files into actionable client insights. 

Using AI Document Access, advisors can connect their GReminders AI Assistant to key systems including Box, SharePoint, OneDrive, Redtail Documents and Google Drive. The new capability provides AI assistants with access to client performance reports, insurance policies and statements and more, enabling more complete and reliable pre-meeting briefs and an improved client experience. 

This advancement builds on the rapid evolution of GReminders’ AI capabilities. Earlier this year, the company introduced its Ask Anything Assistant, giving advisors the ability to interact with their calendars, CRMs and wealth planning tools using simple, everyday language. That momentum continued with the launch of Do Anything, the industry’s first fully autonomous AI assistant capable of anticipating upcoming meetings, curating relevant information and automating action—without requiring advisor prompts. With AI Document Access, that intelligence becomes even more powerful and contextually aware. 

IODJ Digital Asset Hub has introduced its new AI Strategy Insight Engine, a modular analytical system designed to enhance user understanding of market structures, volatility regimes, and multi-scenario risk environments. The launch represents an important step in IODJ’s broader intelligent infrastructure strategy, reinforcing the platform’s commitment to responsible, research-oriented digital asset innovation. 

The AI Strategy Insight Engine functions as a non-predictive analytical module, focusing on structural interpretation rather than directional forecasting. Through contextual data mapping, multi-factor modeling, and scenario-based analytical overlays, the system equips users with clearer visibility into market behavior without offering tactical guidance or performance expectations. 

The new engine integrates with IODJ’s distributed data architecture to deliver enhanced analytical capabilities. These insights provide users with a more complete understanding of how market conditions evolve, particularly during periods of elevated uncertainty or accelerated structural change. 

Itemize, a leader in Agentic Automation for Finance Operations and Controllers, today announced the successful rollout of its AI-powered Accounts Payable (AP) automation solution for Arguijo Corporation, a construction and infrastructure services firm. The partnership is transforming Arguijo’s finance operations by eliminating manual document handoffs, improving coding accuracy, accelerating reconciliation, and giving managers real-time visibility into every pending transaction. 

Powered by Itemize’s proprietary line-level intelligence, the system extracts, interprets, and structures data from invoices, receipts, purchase orders, and other financial documents – enabling streamlined coding through direct ERP integration, automated PO and transaction matching, and intelligent anomaly detection. Arguijo has replaced fragmented, paper-driven workflows with a single, integrated platform that increases throughput while giving finance teams more control and insight. 

Together, Itemize and Argujio are showcasing how AI can reshape financial operations – empowering teams to move from transactional finance to intelligent finance, where AI agents will execute, reconcile, and validate transactions autonomously, while humans focus on strategy and growth. 

Nevis, an AI platform for wealth management, today announced that it has raised $35 million in a Series A round from Sequoia Capital, ICONIQ and Ribbit Capital, bringing its total funding to $40 million less than a year after founding. 

Nevis builds AI tools that help financial advisors automate their administrative workflows end-to-end. The company already serves some of the fastest-growing wealth management firms in the US, supporting Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) that collectively manage more than $50 billion in client assets, and is onboarding new customers at a rapid pace. 

Every year, more than 50 million Americans trust financial advisors with their life savings and rely on their expert guidance through their most important life decisions, such as planning for retirement, funding their children’s education, or building a business. Moreover, the demand for expert financial advice has never been higher as personal wealth is accelerating. The number of US households with more than $500,000 in investable assets is growing 8x faster than the population1. 

Options Technology, a leading provider of high-performance trading infrastructure and market data solutions, today announced the appointment of Bob Coletti as Sales Director, Strategic Accounts. 

With a career spanning senior commercial roles across the financial technology ecosystem, Bob has built a reputation for cultivating long-standing client partnerships and guiding enterprise customers through complex infrastructure and data transformation initiatives. His experience supporting global trading firms and market participants positions him to play a pivotal role in advancing Options’ strategic client strategy. 

In this new position, Bob will focus on deepening engagement with Options’ largest and most sophisticated clients, ensuring they continue to benefit from the firm’s continually expanding portfolio of managed infrastructure, market data, and cloud-native services. His mandate includes strengthening multi-year partnerships, uncovering new areas for collaboration, and aligning Options’ capabilities with the evolving needs of global capital markets. 

Practifi today introduced Practifi Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered capabilities built directly into its CRM to support advisory teams with continuous, wealth-focused intelligence. Available for clients to add to their Practifi Platform beginning today, Practifi Intelligence delivers smart conversation summaries, automated workflows, and intelligent follow-up generation inside familiar workflows. It strengthens how teams work without forcing them to adopt new vendors, replace systems, or manage the disruption tied to major technology changes. 

Unlike tools that add isolated AI features onto existing software or require firms to adopt stand-alone systems, Practifi Intelligence applies an AI-first framework across an already powerful CRM that some of the nation’s top advisory teams rely on every day. The result is an experience that pervades the entire platform, giving firms AI-driven capabilities that function like an always-available layer of support while preserving the stability of their current tech stack. 

Practifi Intelligence includes three complementary sets of capabilities: Relationship Intelligence, Meeting Intelligence, and Admin Intelligence, each designed to support a different part of the advisor workflow while operating in the same connected environment. 

Prudential Advisors, the retail arm of Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU), with more than 3,000 financial advisors and fee-based financial planners who offer clients, including more than 3.5 million American families, a full range of financial advice and solutions, announced today the launch of the Prudential Advisors Connect mobile app, now available for iOS devices. 

The latest development is part of Prudential Advisors’ ongoing innovation strategy that continues to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into advisor productivity tools. The launch is a milestone and is central to Prudential empowering its advisors with on-the-go access as they continue to invest in setting a new standard for the advisor experience. 

The new Prudential Advisors Connect mobile app brings key desktop features to mobile devices for greater flexibility. Features include client search with access to portfolio summaries, leads dashboard with seamless calling and emailing integration, and a Microsoft Outlook agenda view for daily scheduling at a glance. 

S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) today announced new integrations with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable customers to use AI agents to ask complex market, financial, and energy-related questions and receive reliable answers from S&P Global directly within their AWS environments. S&P Global’s trusted data is now available through two new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server integrations with Amazon Quick Suite. 

Through these integrations, customers of S&P Global and AWS can now combine S&P Global’s data with their own enterprise information and AI workflows, unlocking real-time insights and transforming decision-making through S&P Global MCP servers in Amazon Quick Suite. S&P Global Market Intelligence provides a range of financial datasets, including Capital IQ Financials and earnings call transcripts, through the S&P Global MCP for the Kensho LLM-ready API. S&P Global Energy’s trusted commodity and energy market news, insights and research are delivered via the S&P Global AI Ready Data MCP Server. 

These integrations expand the reach of S&P Global across the growing ecosystem of generative and agentic AI solutions and underscore S&P Global’s ongoing commitment to meeting customers wherever they work. S&P Global’s solutions and integrations create value for customers across the full spectrum of GenAI needs, from boosting the performance of large language models with S&P Global’s trusted data to enabling more efficient workflows across applications. 

TruTrade , a leader in AI-powered automated trading systems, today announced a major technological advancement that is redefining the future of algorithmic trading. In 2025, the company has released a next-generation execution engine capable of managing multiple trading accounts simultaneously with extraordinary speed, precision, and risk-balanced control. This new multi-account architecture allows retail traders, prop-firm participants, and professional operators to scale their trading more efficiently and safely than ever before. 

This breakthrough is powered by TruTrade’s flagship platform, RipperOne AI™ , an institutional-grade automation system designed to identify, execute, and manage trades across global futures, indices, equities, and forex markets. The enhanced 2025 engine brings hedge-fund-level capabilities directly to everyday traders. With synchronized order routing, intelligent position sizing, and dynamic risk-management logic, TruTrade now enables clients to deploy consistent strategies across multiple accounts—reducing volatility and eliminating the emotional decision-making often associated with manual trading. 

This innovation becomes even more powerful when paired with QuickFund.AI ™ , TruTrade’s proprietary capital-access system. Together, clients can not only automate their trading but also scale it through funding tiers ranging from $50,000 to $6,000,000. By enabling traders to manage multiple funded accounts while TruTrade’s automation handles execution, the platform helps minimize human error, prevent over-leveraging, and reduce emotional trading.