Google’s venture capital firm Gradient recently led a $12 million Series A investment in Range, a startup that uses AI to give financial advice. Range hopes to completely eliminate the need for human advisors within the next decade and the firm is developing a suite of financial planning tools specifically tailored to the aging millennials.
Founded by Fahad Hassan in 2020, Range emerged from Hassan’s interest in the financial planning industry. Unable to find any tech startups investing in financial planners, he took it upon himself to create a system that uses AI model to provide complex financial advice.
Range has adopted a hybrid approach in its model. Each customer is initially assigned to a human advisor, allowing for a personalized, human touch to intersperse with the automated AI solution. Here, the advisors pass customers’ questions to the AI and the model offers financial advice based on what it knows about the customer. With each answer or recommendation, the model learns and adjusts with customer feedback giving it improving accuracy for every question it answers.
David Cusatis, Range’s co-founder and chief technical officer, explains that AI models often lack the context needed. This can lead to mistakes undetectable to the untrained eye. To avoid this, Range has a workflow that sees customer’s advice being “massaged” and reviewed by human advisors before it is presented to the customer.
With the help of their most recent Series A, Range hopes to make financial planning and advice easily available to their target demographic. Although it may be some time away, Range is on its way to artificially intelligence-driven financial advice.
