January 2026 seems like a popular time to talk about artificial intelligence in financial services.
Welcome to another AI & Finance, where we do have a lot of actual news to cover.
In fact, for more than 60 weeks, we’ve been covering the proliferation of artificial intelligence throughout the financial industry, and now it seems like everyone has taken notice of what many AI-focused writers have been seeing for a long time now: AI needs to be talked about, there are too many questions and deeper issues at stake regarding how we live and relate to each other as people and citizens for us not to talk about what AI might be doing, what it could do in the future, and what it means for us.
Which is why we thought we’d mention that this week, while it feels like the hard news—new innovations, companies, investments, product launches, people moves and the like—is a bit slow, the debate and discussion around AI (and how it might be regulated) heated up noticeably.
One set of commentaries—including some hubbub from the recent Infotech conference for the IT world—points to a need for CIOs and other IT professionals to prove AI’s value in 2026. The argument goes that so far, AI pilots have been at best a mixed bag, with relatively few leading to enterprise-wide deployment of the technology, let alone gains for the company. With so many companies moving pell-mell into AI, the pressure is on for AI to deliver this year.
Another set of commentaries we wanted to mention directly relates to the ongoing discussions of failed AI pilots and whether or not AI’s purported benefits to businesses and workers (not to mention shareholders) will actually materialize. In it, we believe we can find not only the reason so many initial attempts to implement AI fall short, but also the key to successful AI implementation and, perhaps, a vision for the future of the financial industry’s workforce.
Let’s look first at the education industry, where AI-powered education provider Learn4Life published a brief arguing that educators need to be AI aware and AI savvy. So not only should AI be brought into the classroom, but curricula, lessons and assignments need to be designed with AI in mind. Assignments that can be easily completed with AI, like writing a book report or a short essay at home, should be avoided, as should most lessons based on rote memorization. In other words, the technology isn’t going away, so administrators and teachers need to reshape their approach to account for its presence.
That brings us to another report, from Mercer, which found that many companies are falling short in their efforts to adopt AI because they are not thinking in ways that usefully blend the technology with their existing human workforce. In other words, to truly take advantage of AI’s disruptive power, “True value comes from reinventing work itself—deconstructing, redeploying, and reconstructing it to optimize human-AI collaboration and create meaningful long-term gains,” according to Mercer president and CEO Pat Tomlinson.
Maybe AI pilots and implementations fail so often because the technology isn’t really being adopted, it’s being imposed. In some cases, it could be that workers, managers and executives aren’t adapting to AI, they’re resisting the necessary changes to things like processes and expectations, just as some educators are still requiring kids to memorize state capitals and write book reports, assignments that develop skills no longer relevant in the AI-powered world.
If companies want talent to buy into and use the new technology to its fullest extent—which maximizes the chances for successful AI deployment—then they need to redesign work in a way that incorporates the needs and concerns of the workers themselves, according to Mercer.
Let’s get to those headlines…
1. Algebrik AI
Algebrik AI Inc., a Delaware-incorporated company headquartered in New York City and pioneering the world’s first cloud-native, AI-powered, digital-era Loan Origination Suite (LOS), today announced that Algebrik One will use J.D. Power Valuation data.
J.D. Power’s trusted valuation intelligence will be integrated directly into Algebrik One, Algebrik’s agentic AI-powered lending suite that includes Digital Account Opening, the Lender’s Cockpit (LOS), Omni-channel POS, AI Decision Engine, and Portfolio Analytics.
This empowers credit unions and community lenders with real-time, authoritative collateral values at the moment of origination- supporting accurate loan structuring, faster approvals, and improved member experiences.
2. Alto
Alto, the leading self-directed IRA platform bringing private markets to individual retirement portfolios, today announced the continued expansion of its business development leadership team as institutional and enterprise demand for private markets access accelerates. As part of this growth, Evan Deussing joined Alto in January as Head of Revenue, while Ari Koban, who joined the company in November, serves as Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships.
Deussing was previously Partner and Managing Director, Head of Distribution at PPB Capital Partners, where he was responsible for expanding the firm’s presence across the private wealth and RIA channels. Prior to joining PPB, he spent a decade at FS Investments, most recently as Executive Director and Head of IBD/RIA Business Development. Earlier in his career, Deussing held senior sales leadership roles at Prudential Annuities and began his career as a financial advisor at PNC Investments. He holds the CIMA® designation from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a degree in Entrepreneurship from Johnson & Wales University.
Ari Koban’s background includes leadership roles across asset management, fintech and national politics, most recently leading Enterprise RIA business development at Vise AI, a fintech startup that simplifies client portfolio management and administration for financial advisors. He previously spent 11 years at BlackRock, most recently in the Aladdin Wealth Tech business as a Director, where he managed a team that drove the placement, activation and adoption of BlackRock’s advisor-facing portfolio analysis tools. Earlier in his career, he worked for President Obama’s administration in various roles including serving in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, managing campaign fundraising operations, and as an appointee at the Export-Import Bank of the U.S.
3. Axyon AI
Eolas Capital, a provider of distribution and business services to boutique asset managers, today announced a strategic partnership with Axyon AI, an Italian fintech company that provides AI solutions to investment firms for product launches and new sources of alpha. As part of the agreement, Eolas will provide Axyon AI with product development and distribution support in North America.
Axyon AI was founded in 2016 in Modena, Italy, and is led by co-founders Daniele Grassi, CEO; Jacopo Credi, chief technology officer; and Giacomo Barigazzi, chief operating officer. The firm is backed by international investors including ING Ventures, UniCredit Bank, CDP Venture Capital, The Techshop and U.S. investors Montage Ventures and Green Sands Equity.
Axyon AI applies artificial intelligence at every stage of the investment process, from agentic AI that identifies emerging investable themes across global markets, to predictive AI that forecasts relative asset performance, and explainable AI that provides complete transparency into model outputs for institutional workflows.
4. Docupace
Docupace, the premier provider of back-office software to streamline operations of wealth management enterprises and financial advisors, today announced the appointment of Scott Willette as Chief Technology Officer. An accomplished technology executive with more than two decades of leadership experience, Willette will oversee Docupace’s engineering organization, platform architecture, and long-term technology strategy, with a focus on cloud modernization and scalable innovation.
Willette joins Docupace at a pivotal moment as the company accelerates its evolution into a product-led, AI-enabled, and client-obsessed organization. In his new role, he will lead Docupace’s AI-powered scaling initiatives, strengthen engineering and infrastructure capabilities, spearhead the company’s strategic transition to AWS cloud services, and reimagine the company’s QA function, among other key initiatives.
Willette is widely regarded as a transformational leader who has scaled high-performing software organizations and led global teams of hundreds of technologists. Prior to joining Docupace, he held senior technology leadership roles at Litera, PatientPay, Digital Turbine, MicroPact, and LexisNexis, where he drove platform modernization, improved product velocity, and enhanced software quality.
5. edatanetworks
edatanetworks Inc. today announced the approval of U.S. Patent Application No. 18/206,381 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), further strengthening the company’s position as a leader in next-generation transaction networks and commerce infrastructure for community.
The newly granted patent, titled “Shopping Cart for Items Selected by an Account Holder Incented by a Donation to Conduct a Transaction,” introduces multi-merchant, single-checkout ecommerce architectures and digital marketplaces. The group of merchants is presented as a set of unified storefronts where a merchant-defined portion of each transaction is contributed to community initiatives selected by the consumer – at no additional cost to the consumer.
At the core of the invention is a tokenized transaction framework that transforms routine commerce into a dynamic data signal – one that can simultaneously drive conversion, loyalty, and community impact. Consumers complete a single payment across multiple merchants, while contribution logic is executed automatically at the transaction level, enabling transparent, auditable, and scalable redistribution of value.
6. Formulary Financial
Formulary Financial, a full-service, AI-native fund administrator, today announced it has emerged from stealth with $4.6 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Acrew Capital, Company Ventures, Human Ventures, Serena Ventures, and Alumni Ventures, among other strategic partners and industry executives.
Formulary offers comprehensive fund administration services across the investment lifecycle — including accounting, reporting, compliance, audit, capital activity, and investor communications — powered by an AI-native platform designed to keep the data accurate, synthesized, and accessible in real time.
More than $23 trillion in private markets capital is still managed with erroneous spreadsheets, outdated software, and expensive shadow fund administration processes. Incumbent providers keep trying to retrofit legacy infrastructure with modern tools, and new software solutions are experimenting with agentic workflows to replace accountants. But the underlying problem is unsolved: the data remains unreliable and fragmented, and the need for expert fund administration support has only become more critical as asset managers grow in size and complexity.
7. infineo
infineo (infineo.ai), a technology company modernizing life insurance administration and asset infrastructure through blockchain-enabled systems and artificial intelligence (‘A.I.’), today announced the appointment of Jay Rogers as Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
Mr. Rogers succeeds Eric Stearns, who will remain actively engaged with infineo’s institutional partners and global stakeholders in an advisory role.
As CEO, Mr. Rogers will lead the company’s next phase of growth, with a focus on greater institutional adoption, regulatory alignment, and long-term partnerships across the life insurance and financial services ecosystem.
8. Linvo
Linvo, a Swiss-based wealth management firm, today announced an initiative to integrate artificial intelligence across its asset management services through a strategic fintech partnership.
The integration enables clients to access portfolio information, request services, and receive responses in real time – without paperwork or delays. Advisors will use the same AI tools to deliver faster, data-driven support.
Linvo is among the first Swiss wealth management firms to pursue full AI integration across both client-facing and advisory operations.
9. Merchant
Merchant announced today the appointment of Clayton Chandler as Chief Data Officer. In this role, Chandler will lead Merchant’s enterprise data and artificial intelligence strategy, helping to deepen the firm’s ability to use data as a strategic asset across its growing ecosystem of partner firms. Chandler brings extensive experience helping financial services organizations use data more effectively to inform decisions, improve operations, and better serve clients.
Prior to joining Merchant, Chandler served as Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Osaic, where he led the firm’s data strategy during a period of significant growth. Since joining in 2021, he has helped the organization evolve into one of the world’s largest independent broker-dealers, with more than $800 billion in assets and over 10,000 independent advisors.
Earlier in his career, Chandler held senior leadership roles at Credit Suisse, including Chief Data Scientist and Chief Information Security Officer, where he led global teams focused on analytics and cybersecurity. He also served in multiple senior roles at the U.S. National Security Agency, including Technical Director of High-Performance Data Analytics.
10. Ninth Wave
Ninth Wave, the leading provider of open finance connectivity and services, today announced the launch of Compass, an AI-driven onboarding assistant that dramatically simplifies and accelerates bank integration into the open finance ecosystem, while improving accuracy, predictability, and overall time-to-market.
Onboarding has traditionally been one of the most complex and time-intensive stages of open finance integration. Financial institutions must align APIs with open finance standards, reconcile differences in data formats, validate consent and authentication workflows, and navigate extensive technical documentation—often through slow, manual, trial-and-error processes. Compass fundamentally transforms this model by serving as an intelligent guide throughout the onboarding journey, providing clear direction and automation at every step of the integration process.
Using AI-powered automation, Compass analyzes and tests a bank’s APIs to identify gaps, inconsistencies, or mismatches that must be resolved to comply with open finance standards. This includes evaluating how account and transaction data are formatted, how customer consent is captured and managed, and how authentication processes operate. Rather than relying on repeated back-and-forth between teams, Compass proactively surfaces issues and provides clear, actionable guidance on what needs to change.
11. Orchestro.ai
The Supply Chain Project (TSCP) and Orchestro.ai today announced Angelic Intelligence Matching, a co-branded initiative that empowers the TSCP App with a new kind of intelligence: one that cares. By integrating Orchestro’s “Angelic Intelligence”—a virtue-based AI framework—into TSCP’s logistics platform, the partnership is embedding compassion directly into the code of the global supply chain, ensuring that every logistical decision prioritizes human dignity alongside operational speed.
The initiative launches as the retail industry grapples with a massive resource paradox. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Happy Returns, total consumer returns reached $890 billion in 2024, representing 16.9% of all retail sales. Orchestro.ai and TSCP are deploying Angelic Intelligence to transform unwanted goods into a lifeline, intelligently diverting vital goods away from landfills and into the hands of families who need them most.
How it Works: The “Wisdom” Architecture Unlike traditional supply chain algorithms that optimize solely for cost or distance, Angelic Intelligence utilizes a Virtue-Based Architecture. Developed and operated by Orchestro.ai, this system employs specialized “Virtue Agents” that evaluate donation matches through ethical lenses.
12. Prudential Advisors
Prudential Advisors, the retail arm of Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU), announced today important enhancements to its Advisor Leads programs, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and data science across the full lead lifecycle to improve lead quality and increase conversion rates, benefitting advisors and consumers.
The latest enhancement ensures AI is embedded end-to-end across the proprietary platform, Prudential Advisors Connect. The platform’s lead offering includes Gen AI-derived customer insights. AI uses existing Prudential data to generate actionable insights, helping advisors personalize outreach and more effectively engage prospects, leading to richer, more meaningful conversations. “As the volume of data available to advisors continues to grow, AI is a strategic investment in advisors and growth,” said Pat Hynes, president of Prudential Advisors. “If we are to meet the challenge of turning a sea of data into meaningful action, we need a leads program that applies AI thoughtfully and responsibly – to help advisors focus on the opportunities that offer consumers the right advice at the right time. Preserving the advisor-client relationship is at the core of our business, and with these enhancements, we’re reinforcing technology’s connection to Prudential Advisors’ broader ‘relationship-first’ strategy.”
In addition, the program incorporates data science models that prioritize the leads most likely to convert. By prioritizing higher-quality opportunities, lead propensity modeling empowers advisors to focus time and effort on where it will make the biggest impact.
13. Quantiphi
Quantiphi, an award-winning AI-first digital engineering company, has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the AI-driven three-way document comparison capability embedded within Dociphi, Quantiphi’s generative AI-powered intelligent document management platform.
The patented capability, titled “Validation system and method for concurrent visual validation of two or more electronic documents,” powers Dociphi’s Comparison Screen, a feature that intelligently compares extracted entities across multiple versions of any document type and offers smart recommendations, enabling users to view all input documents on one side and an AI-generated comparison on the other, instantly locate where each value appears within its contextual location on the original file and resolve discrepancies through a secure Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) workflow. This capability is particularly valuable for insurance workflows such as quote comparison, policy review and discrepancy detection in claims, where accuracy and version control directly influence operational speed and customer experience.
The patent grant further strengthens Dociphi’s position as an advanced, template-free, AI-powered platform built to manage document variability at scale, delivering consistent, high-accuracy outputs while continuously improving through user-driven learning loops.
14. Sophitron
According to a survey conducted by LendingTree, https://www.lendingtree.com/credit-cards/study/ai-chatbot-users/, 49% of AI chatbot users report that AI has influenced a financial decision, and 26% of users typically turn to chatbots for financial information. Among them, 61% seek help with personal finance management, 42% inquire about stock market trends, and 40% request assistance with public services such as Medicaid.
Despite this demand, a significant limitation remains: ChatGPT and similar models can only provide general advice because they lack specific “knowledge” of an individual’s financial profile—including income, spending habits, and retirement accounts. Consequently, the guidance offered is often generic and not directly applicable to the user’s unique situation.
Sophtron is addressing this gap as the AI Agent connecting millions of users to their bank, credit card, investment, mortgage, loan, and utility accounts. By providing a comprehensive view of a user’s financial status, Sophtron now makes this critical data available within AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
15. Tradestation
TradeStation Securities, Inc. (“TradeStation Securities”), an award-winning†, self-clearing online brokerage firm for trading stocks, options, futures, and futures options, announced the release of its Model Context Protocol (MCP) connection, built by its affiliate TradeStation Technologies, Inc. The initial release is configured to work with Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, PBC, with enhancements coming soon to work with additional popular AI platforms for users to choose from. Building on TradeStation’s reputation for delivering high-end trading technology and reliable brokerage services, the new service underscores the company’s commitment to sophisticated traders.
TradeStation is working to redefine what it means to trade in the modern era, evolving to deliver next-generation solutions designed to empower its customers. The company’s latest development enables users to connect AI assistants to their TradeStation accounts, giving them an exciting new way to interact with their trading tools and the market. Some of these AI assistants have features that allow for a conversational trading experience and may be able to assist with certain analysis of account positions or automate actions for traders.*
TradeStation’s MCP connection is now available to customers, subject to applicable account minimums and approvals. Access to Claude through the TradeStation MCP requires users to have an active Claude Pro subscription, which can be obtained directly through Anthropic.
16. Zinnia
Zinnia, a leading life insurance and annuity (L&A) technology company, today announced a new integration with Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company. With the Snowflake platform, Zinnia can more effectively deliver cutting-edge analytics and artificial intelligence solutions to reshape how insurance is delivered. The collaboration combines Zinnia’s deep insurance expertise with Snowflake’s premier data and AI platform to transform how insurers leverage data for real-time decision making with enterprise-grade security and scalability.
Through this collaboration, Zinnia has implemented Snowflake’s comprehensive data platform to enable insurance companies to harness machine learning and AI capabilities at scale. The solution delivers advanced insights, self-hosted Streamlit applications, and GenAI capabilities that modernize insurance operations and accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
This collaboration positions Zinnia as a premier implementation partner for insurance companies looking to leverage Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud. With deep expertise in both insurance operations and modern data architecture, Zinnia bridges the gap between traditional insurance processes and cutting-edge technology capabilities.
