AI wealthtech Pagaya closes $14m funding round
Pagaya, a fintech creating artificial intelligence (AI) for the asset management sector, has raised $14 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Oak HC/FT and Harvey Golub, former chairman and CEO of American Express.
Other participating investors were GF Investments, Siam Commercial Bank, Clal Insurance, and Pagaya’s seed investor, Viola Ventures.
As part of the investment, Golub and Dan Petrozzo will join the company’s board. Petrozzo is a venture partner at Oak HC/FT, former partner and global head of investment management technology at Goldman Sachs, and former chief information officer of Fidelity Investments.
The firm was co-founded in 2016 by Yahav Yulzari, Avital Pardo and Gal Krubiner – now CEO, to help institutional investors with its AI-based asset management. It now has offices in New York and Tel Aviv.
This funding will help the firm develop its tech and algorithm, as well as its team of data scientists and sales people throughout the world.
With its technology, Pagaya manages institutional money by investing in market opportunities previously inaccessible to the asset management industry. The company’s client base spans banks, insurance companies, pension funds, asset managers and high net worth investors.
“Even today with an increase in the use of technology in underwriting, there’s a gap between institutions and good borrowers which limits consumer access to the right capital. Pagaya is closing that gap with their AI,” says Golub.
Pagaya’s algorithm analyses millions of data points to assess risk in different financial instruments, identify emerging alternative asset classes and generate an excess return in those sectors for institutional investors.
Recently, Pagaya closed a $75 million debt-financing deal with Citi, and hired Ed Mallon as its chief investment officer, who has previously worked at Blackrock. Pagaya manages $250 million in capital, mainly from institutional investors.t
