Cognaize raises $18M to build a better LLM for the finance sector, one that keeps humans in the loop

Cognaize Closes Series A Funding to Driver Further Innovation, Accelerate Growth, and Meet Exploding Demand for Leading AI Solution for Financial Services Organizations

Argonautic Ventures Leads $18 Million Round, Further Extending Cognaize’s Momentum and Leadership Position in Delivering Hybrid Intelligence-Driven AI Solutions to Who’s Who of Banking and Insurance Market Leaders

New York, NY – July 18, 2023 – Cognaize, the intelligent document processing (IDP) company powered by its proprietary hybrid intelligence technology, announced today that it has closed $18 million in Series A funding to accelerate research and product development, marketing, and sales capacity to meet the explosive global demand for the company’s AI solutions, which currently are focused on meeting the specific challenges of the global financial industry. The round was led by Argonautic Ventures, with participation from Metaplanet, and several other investors. 

Cognaize has developed a breakthrough approach - hybrid intelligence - to deliver on the promise of AI for financial services. The company’s hybrid intelligence AI platform combines proprietary deep-learning AI technologies; hyper-focused financial models trained on over 1.3 million financial documents such as loan applications, SEC filings, ESG-related documents, presentations, or trustee reports; and a unique user interface that enables the seamless engagement of human “experts in the loop” throughout the document automation process. The Cognaize AI platform is designed from the ground up to address complex challenges for both data scientists and frontline financial analysts s to streamline critical decision-making and deliver dramatic results.

In 2022 Cognaize grew its annual recurring revenue by 4x and GAAP revenues by three times from the year prior.  The company has continued accelerating its growth in the first six months of 2023.

“We are thrilled to partner with Cognaize as they apply the transformative power of AI and large language models (LLMs) to finance,“ said Viken Douzdjian, Managing Partner at Argonautic Ventures. “AI has disrupted various industries, but the massive amount of unstructured financial data creates countless use cases that need finance-specific, generative AI. The Cognaize platform can process vast amounts of unstructured financial data and extract insights with remarkable precision and speed, resulting in enhanced decision-making, risk assessment, and the uncovering of patterns and trends previously obscured by complexity and human error. We have strong conviction in Al, Vahe, and the Cognaize team to define how the finance industry interacts with AI.”

“Cognaize is a company to watch as they are one of the first to deliver repeatable and measurable value through AI in the financial industry. It was an easy decision to invest in Al, Vahe, and the entire Cognaize team,” said Rauno Miljand, Managing Partner, Metaplanet. “They have already harnessed the power of AI as demonstrated by the enviable growth of Cognaize’s business, the global leaders in finance that they have already secured as customers, and their unmatched technology roadmap. They are rapidly redefining how the finance industry can leverage modern AI to harness the power of their own data to dramatically cut costs while simultaneously creating new competitive advantage.”

“We are grateful for our amazing customers that have continued to fuel our growth on so many levels,” said  Al Eisaian, CEO, Cognaize. “We are also proud of our incredible team that continues to work hard every day to push the frontiers of AI to serve our customers in the best way possible. Finally, we are thrilled by the enthusiastic support and confidence of our investors that believe in our mission. Closing this oversubscribed Series A is a testament to our investors’ commitment as well as the value Cognaize’s AI solutions are delivering to a who’s who of global leaders in the financial industry.”

“The advancements in the field of Large Language Models (LLMs) are thrilling, and Cognaize’s finance-specific LLM is outperforming generic technologies. However, we also know that even better comprehension requires a graphical understanding,” said Vahe Andonians, founder, CTO and CPO, Cognaize. “We remain committed to constructing a cross-source knowledge graph that will deliver deeper intelligence - a critical step for substantial progress in our domain. In addition, Cognaize has been built from day one on the principle of privacy by design as a critical, non-negotiable foundation of everything we do, and we will continue to refine our client-side AI models, guaranteeing nobody gains an advantage of client's data except the client itself.”

About Cognaize

Cognaize is an AI-driven IDP solutions company powered by hybrid intelligence for financial services organizations to drive continuous improvement and make transformative decisions that result in an ever-better business. Powered by Cognaize’s sophisticated financial AI models, which have been trained on over 1.3 million documents, and each customer’s proprietary data, AI models, and financial experts, Cognaize is the first company to deliver a complete AI solution integrated into the daily operations of business and data science teams, bringing the promise of AI to financial services firms. 

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