alpha i is a research-led tech company combining cutting edge research in Bayesian methods and machine learning to bring AI to a large class of dynamical problems that traditional methods fail to describe. The company’s first vertical is the ultimate dynamical system: the financial markets. They use their proprietary AI tech to spot transient market inefficiencies and and translate them into investment opportunities for the hedge fund industry.

Giacomo Mariotti has Master’s in Particle Physics and Quantitative Finance. He worked for 2 years at RWE Npower, where he was the head quant of the hedging desk of the company.

Sreekumar Thaithara Balan has a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Cambridge and 4 years of postdoctoral experience at UCL. His research focus is high dimensional Bayesian inference. His models for cosmological data analysis and object detection led to the discovery of a new planet.

ArrayStream Technologies helps fund providers launch next generation AI-powered mutual funds. We maximise the probability of beating the index by combining dynamic composite signals with our novel polymorphic diversification method.

Yu Zheng holds a PhD in Quantitative Finance from Imperial College London. He is an expert in machine learning, option pricing and portfolio construction. During his PhD, Yu worked for a leading private bank designing systematic trading strategies.

Ran Fan has 10 years of experience in building real-time automated trading systems for companies including Goldman Sachs and one of Europe’s largest systematic hedge funds. Ran holds a Master’s in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College London.

Brolly is an AI-driven personal insurance concierge, available through a smartphone app. Brolly is being built to make it incredibly easy people to understand, manage and buy insurance, using the Brolly Advisor, Brolly Locker and Brolly Shop.

Phoebe Hugh began her career at Aviva as an Underwriter and Product Manager. She holds qualifications with the Chartered Insurance Institute and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Manchester.

Mykhailo Loginov spent over 7 years at Microsoft and Skype as a Software Engineer and Manager, and holds a Masters in Computer Science from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

Cleo is an A.I. assistant to manage your finances. Using machine learning we automatically classify your transactions, deliver relevant insights into your spending and give you a clear overview of your finances. And users can get all of this, just by sending Cleo a text.

Rather than creating a bank, Cleo sits on top of existing infrastructure to give our users an elegant and user-friendly banking experience. By integrating APIs for banks and other financial service providers, Cleo aims to become a hub for each user’s banking activity.

Barney Hussey-Yeo holds a Master’s in Machine Learning from the University of Bristol and has spent the last year working as a Decision Scientist at Wonga, analysing financial data.

CodeReg makes regulatory change in finance as simple as a software update. Financial institutions face a mountain of regulation. Manual processes can’t handle the complex, interwoven and shifting rules, exposing firms to massive fines and costing billions to change systems in response. Our compliance engine automatically verifies and monitors financial compliance. We can provide real-time compliance insight and flag any potential breaches before it’s too late.

Samuel Watts spent four years in quantitative finance, building and advising on regulatory systems for both major European banking supervisors and financial firms. He holds Master’s degrees in Maths and Mathematical Finance from the Universities of Warwick and Oxford.

Stacy-Ann Sinclair spent a decade building high-frequency trading systems and globally scalable data infrastructure for three tier one investment banks. As a VP at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, she led development of a unified platform for MiFID II compliance. She has a CS degree from City University.

Credit Kudos is a challenger credit bureau developing a Financial Behaviour Score based on real-time financial data. The company recently became the first of its kind to receive full authorisation from the FCA as a Credit Reference Agency. The Credit Kudos platform gathers information from your online banking to determine your suitability when applying for financial products.

Matt Schofield and Freddy Kelly met studying Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Prior to founding Credit Kudos, Matt was leading Data Science teams for Universal Music Group (UMG) and CTO of UMG’s music discovery platform, SpinnUp. Freddy joined Bitnami (YC W13) after graduation where he was responsible for development of their cloud launchpad, deployed initially for Microsoft and later a number of other cloud vendors including Google, Amazon and VMWare. Freddy went on to be the first engineer at A16z backed financial analytics platform, TXN.

CreditMint is decentralising corporate lending. The corporate debt industry is migrating from a bank-led model towards smaller lenders. But these new-wave lenders are tied to constant cycles of reconciliation, and trading is slow and expensive. Furthermore, companies lose track of their creditors and the market is structurally illiquid.

We fix this using a public blockchain as the shared ledger for corporate debt. We provide a dealmaking platform; a trading layer; and a settlements facility, all communicating with one digital asset on Ethereum.

Crypto Squad helps traders create and manage crypto funds. Blockchain technologies are helping democratize fund management. Crypto enthusiasts are setting up informal investment pools made of friends and family. These investment pools are insecure and unregulated. Funds are stored with the pool manager, making them an easy target for hackers. They operate in legal gray areas. Investors have no mechanism to track fund performance and remain crypto illiterate. Pool managers are unable to monetize and scale.

Crypto Squad help traders quickly and securely setup these investment pools. Our proprietary wallets let investors mirror trades performed by the manager, while maintaining asset custody. Startup investments, bonds and many other financial instruments will soon be tokenized. Crypto Squad will become wealth management everyone can understand and access.

Anthony Wilson received a masters in computer science from Imperial College London. He’s a three time CTO and has advised Chinese state-owned enterprises on how to use blockchain for supply chain management. He’s been developing blockchain applications for six years.

Donut makes crypto easy. Their mission is to empower better financial health by democratising access to the new and emerging digital asset (read: crypto) ecosystem.

Neel Popat has over 7 years deep finance experience having worked at 3 top-tier investment funds managing >$150bn. Neel started his career at Rothschild and holds a first class degree in Financial Mathematics & Statistics from LSE/Harvard. He built his first business out of his bedroom aged 14.

Jordan Abderrachid was one of the first backend developers at N26 bank. He brings with him deep tech experience, having built security architecture that 1M people use to transact with across Europe. He is an experienced blockchain developer and holds an MEng from École Centrale de Lyon.

Insurami is re-inventing the process for leasing office spaces, unlocking £200bn in the US, UK and Europe alone. Our proprietary risk model enables landlords to vet customers in seconds, and lower upfront deposit costs by 90%.

Majed Chaaraoui spent 5 years at Blenheim Chalcot where he grew tech start-ups in financial services and property. He has worked in consulting and investment banking, and has a BEng in Electronics & Communications Engineering and an MSc in Financial Mathematics from Leeds University.

Arnor Davidsson is experienced in software engineering, product management and UX. He has worked in both established and early stage tech companies, and previously co-founded his own start-up. He holds a BSc in Engineering Management and an MSc in Computer Science.

Kue reinvents consumer credit and changes how we purchase. Current retail credit options are terrible. In-store financing is slow, painful, and confusing. Kue is a consumer friendly credit product that provides an affordable monthly payment plan for any product. We are a fully FCA regulated bespoke lending engine, complete with integrated payments and credit analysis.

Saul Frank has focussed on payments, credit, and analytics throughout his career in the banking and retail industries. He managed the build of a big data platform at Sainsbury’s and was Head of Information Services at RBS Commercial where he conceptualised analytics for £3 trillion of payments across digital channels. This is not his first startup. He previously founded YayPay Inc, an automated accounts receivable platform for US SMEs. Saul also trained as a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) and as a hobby project, started and grew the business listings website callupcontact.com to 5 million annual viewers.

Leif is a software platform for income-based payments. Leif allows schools, bootcamps, charities, and financial institutions to have users commit a percentage of income towards their organization in lieu of paying fixed amounts. Leif uses advanced behavioural technology to increase customer adoption and lifetime value.

Francis Larson holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and was recently named to LinkedIn’s Next Wave 120 Under 35 list.

We believe that by 2030, every consumer who makes a credit card payment or a bank transfer, would have used the blockchain without even knowing it. For this to happen, regulators would play a very important role. Our vision is to be the layer of trust between banks, regulators and blockchain companies.

Globally, there is a wave of upcoming cryptocurrency regulations for AML and fraud prevention (FATF, EU 5th AML Directive, SG Payment Services Bill). In order to comply, blockchain companies, funds and regulators need high-tech cybercrime tools.

Mriganka Pattnaik

Mriganka Pattnaik (CEO) has 6 years of experience across investment banking and technology. Before EF, he worked at Luno, a Naspers backed cryptocurrency exchange where he was responsible for business expansion as they scaled from 5 to 40 countries.

Nirmal AK

Nirmal AK (CTO) has 6 years of work experience as fraud data scientist at Paypal and Instamojo, an Indian payments startup. Prior to joining EF, he founded a startup which manufactured ethereum mining rigs.