Time for a flashback. As I zoomed into robo-advisory in two recent posts[1] (inspired by the Barron’s article The Top Robo Advisors: An Exclusive Ranking in collaboration with Backend Benchmarking), I realized that several Fintechs that I had profiled in the past were either bought out or had folded.

Hedgeable[2] has shut down. It was one of the earliest standalone robo-advisors that chose to be active and pioneering with its partnership for example with private equity platform CircleUp. In the most recently published review of Hedgeable, from Business Insider, they had just managed to accumulate $80mil AUM. The passive investing tsunami killed them.

Kensho[3], one of the big-fat Goldman Sachs early Fintech investments, has been bought out. Warren, the AI name that Kensho chose, and that was aiming to serve traders and analysts, and serve and steal the jobs of analysts; is now under the roof of S&P Global. The announcement hit the market in March.

In less than 2 months, S&P Global launched a collaboration with Crunchbase through which S&P Global Market Intelligence platform users will be able to access robust information on privately held companies licensed from Crunchbase with the help of Kensho machine learning data analytics. In addition, in the end of July, S&P Global announced the launch of Kensho Labs through which S&P Global Market Intelligence clients will be able to access a digital innovation lab for prototyping new product solutions[4].

Algomi[5], one of my early picks in the tough bond market space, has been having troubles and their CEO had to step down. This space is really difficult to crack, despite the need to change. In my post, Technologies for the storm in fixed-income, I cover half a dozen of them. Boncube shut down early on. Algomi launched a partnership with Euronext and took in an investment from Euroclear (undisclosed amount). It is really very early to say whether these will move the needle. Trumid, similarly, accepted a $10mil investment from Deutsche Borse and integrated Charles River software.

[1] Barron’s exclusive Robo-advisor ranking and 3 unanswered questions

Robo-advisors: What are the fact and figures telling us?

[2] Hedgehogs have one simple trick and Hedgeable too

[3] Kensho: Warren is like Watson and Siri, for analysts, investors and traders

[4] Combining Kensho’s Machine Learning Capabilities with S&P Global’s Vast Data Assets, New Innovations Take Shape in Open Source, Rapid Development Environment

[5] Algomi Connecting Fixed Income Buy and Sell side by enhancing distribution

Efi Pylarinou is a Fintech thought-leader, consultant and investor. 

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