This edition of Wealthtech Roundup features Amplify hiring Jack Martin as Chief Marketing Officer, Tilt raising seed funding, Orion partnering with Voya, Hamachi launching an AI communications platform, Gregory FCA debuting an optimization platform for AI search, Zocks partnering with Holistiplan, Envestnet announcing the most used AI insights on its platform, Orion revealing a refreshed brand and advisor framework, MyVest integrating transition management and proposal generation capabilities, Praxis acquiring WEALTHAWK, Aladdin launching generative AI tools for advisors and Grantd buying StockOpter.
Larry's Take
AI innovations are taking over wealthtech. In the June Wealthtech Roundup, I said, “The term ‘AI’ will soon be insufficient to fully describe what’s happening with the rapid change before us.” This month, eight of 12 stories in this roundup are directly related to AI.
This month’s stories cover AI in lead generation, communications, emailing, work organization, internet searches, employee stock options, compliance, workflows, tax and market commentary. There soon will be no corner of our industry that remains untouched by this technology.
Looking back at the question of whether AI will take our industry’s jobs, most predicted that it would not, and that prediction is correct, so far. The jury is still out on a counter-prediction that AI would actually increase the number of jobs as usually happens when disruptive technologies move through the economy. I am hopeful that it will, but at the very least, it’s making us more efficient and productive.
If you would like to discuss this Larry’s Take further, including how these trends might impact your business, please contact me at larry.roth@ascentix.com.
Amplify Hires Co-Founder Of Elite Advisor Group As Chief Marketing Officer
Scottsdale, Arizona-based Amplify Platform hires Jack Martin as Chief Marketing Officer, a newly created role. He will lead the company’s brand strategy, demand generation and go-to-market execution. Martin, the Co-Founder of Elite Advisor Group, brings more than three decades of industry experience, Amplify said.
Amplify is an enterprise growth platform built on an AI-native data lake. It has more than $22 billion in total assets on its platform, according to a news release. The company recently made two other appointments to its C-suite: Mark Fischer as Chief Operating Officer and Vickie Lewsin as Chief Growth Officer.
“This is an all-star leadership team at a firm where people are the super power,” said Martin. “Amplify is bringing the future of connected data to enterprises and advisors with the tools, technology and messaging they need to scale and deliver differentiating experiences.”
Tilt Raises $7.1 Million Seed Round For AI-Based Direct Indexing Platform
Miami-based Tilt, an AI-driven direct indexing platform, completes a $7.1 million seed round led by Portage and Lerer Hippeau. Participants include Golden Ventures, Real Ventures, Cumberland Investments and FJ Labs.
Tilt said the platform enables advisors to create individual customized indexes in minutes through its AI-driven process. The seed capital will fund the platform’s growth, including hiring engineering and marketing teams, developing its tax optimization engine and pursuing integrations.
“Direct indexing has historically been the privilege of a select few, but Tilt is bringing it to the entire wealth management ecosystem at scale,” said Andrew Peek, CEO of Tilt. “By combining AI-driven research with real-time tax optimization, we’re helping advisors and investors create hyper-personalized portfolios that reflect their values, preferences, and beliefs.”
Orion Partners With Voya On Advisor Platform
Orion collaborates with Voya Financial on the launch of a new advisor platform, WealthPath. The platform combines financial planning, investment strategy execution, portfolio review and relationship management and is designed to provide a holistic client experience. “The platform offers a unified experience by integrating Orion’s pioneering technology with Voya’s systems,” said Todd Bertucci, Executive Vice President of Technology Sales at Orion.
Voya said the WealthPath platform can support companies’ employee retention, as well as driving growth for advisors, by making it easier to capture rollovers, outflows and unmanaged assets in retirement accounts. According to a survey from the company, 48% of employed Americans are more likely to stay with an employer that offers access to a professional financial advisor. Orion serviced over $5 trillion in assets under administration and over $100 billion of wealth management platform assets as of June 30.
“WealthPath will be critical in helping to drive holistic client engagement for our fast-growing network of Investor Channel advisors,” said Rebecca Chiccino, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Channel at Voya Financial. “It gives them the flexibility and resources to meet clients’ evolving needs, whether they’re planning for retirement or managing wealth in other areas of their financial lives.”
Industry Veterans Team Up To Launch Hamachi, An AI-Driven Communications Platform
Park City, Utah-based Hamachi.ai announces the launch of its AI-driven communications platform. The platform is designed to use AI to facilitate timely, personalized and compliant communications between asset managers, advisors and investors. The Co-Founders are Eric Clarke of Orion; Brian McLaughlin of Orion and formerly Redtail; Mike Wilson, formerly of AdvisoryWorld; and Mustapha Baassiri, formerly of Orion of Advizr.
The group self-funded Hamachi’s development and launch. The platform can draft personalized client communications and is integrated with Outlook, Gmail, chat and APIs. Its AI agents are trained to perform SEC and FINRA compliance checks, and Hamachi automatically flags potential compliance risks.
“Hamachi is purpose-built for advisors working with asset managers,” said Clarke, Co-Founder of Hamachi. “We’re creating the next frontier for advisor and asset manager communication, where technology doesn’t just speed things up—it makes every message smarter, safer, and more client-focused.”
Gregory FCA Launches AI Search Optimization Tool For Financial Services
Philadelphia-based communications firm Gregory FCA announces the launch of its AI search optimization platform for financial services firms. The Gregory Influence Engine is designed to help wealth managers, advisors and other financial firms appear more prominently in AI-driven search. While SEO strategies typically utilize keywords, links and rankings, AI searches are based on prompts. Gregory FCA says AI search visitors — from AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity — are 4.4 times more valuable than traditional search visitors.
“SEO no longer guarantees visibility,” said Greg Matusky, Founder and CEO of Gregory FCA. “AI search decides who gets found. The Gregory Influence Engine gives financial firms the intelligence and roadmap they need to appear in those results.”
Zocks And Holistiplan Partner On AI-Driven Advisor Workflows
San Francisco-based Zocks, an AI assistant for advisors, integrates with College Station, Texas-based tax software provider Holistiplan. The deal gives advisors the ability to access Holistiplan’s tax data and insights directly from Zocks’ AI advisor workflows.
With the integration, Zocks users can access Holistiplan tax analysis within client meeting prep functions, type real-time tax questions into Zocks during client meetings and get AI-generated drafts of tax-related client emails, among other features. The company said AI-assisted workflows can help advisors recapture 10 or more hours per week.
“Zocks is bringing AI automation and insights into more of the tools advisors rely on every day, including now tax planning,” said Mark Gilbert, CEO of Zocks. “Partnering with Holistiplan integrates best-in-class tax planning into daily advisor workflows like meeting prep, email replies, and forms, which our platform automates with industry-leading accuracy.”
Envestnet Announces Most Utilized AI Insights In Q2
For advisors on Envestnet’s ecosystem in Q2, the AI insights that elicited the keenest interest were those that identified opportunities for converting idle or underperforming client assets. For example, “non-managed account with under performing product” and “non-managed cash concentration” both ranked among the top 10 most-utilized data insights.
Another leading action item for advisors was the data alert “stalled new account proposal,” indicating that advisors leveraged the insights to pursue asset growth. The second quarter also saw heightened activity related to insights about tax-loss harvesting, reflecting a broader finding about investor interest in tax strategies. Envestnet has $7 trillion in platform assets.
“Across both planning and portfolio-level insights, we continue to see strong engagement with tools that help advisors personalize recommendations and take timely action,” said Molly Weiss, Group President of Wealth Management Platform at Envestnet. “With new research showing that over 90% of investors adopt new solutions based on advisor recommendations, we know that surfacing the right opportunities at the right moment can have an outsized impact on client outcomes—and advisor growth.”
Orion Reveals Brand Refresh And New Investment Framework
Omaha, Nebraska-based Orion announces a new look for its brand and unveils a new unified investment framework on its advisor platform. The firm has a new logo, refreshed design language and matching visuals for elements of its platform, including Redtail and Brinker.
Orion’s new framework is designed to simplify strategy selection, speed the implementation of book conversions, and provide expanded due diligence and wider strategist coverage, the firm said. Orion is also renaming “Communities” as “Orion Investment Portal” to reflect streamlined access to a range of offerings — including Orion Custom Indexing, Orion Fixed Income and the refreshed Orion Model Marketplace — through a single platform.
“Advisors today are navigating a more complex investment landscape — and clients expect more than one-size-fits-all solutions,” said Tim Holland, Chief Investment Officer at Orion. “By integrating behavioral finance, risk management, and tax-aware strategies into a flexible, goal-based structure, we’re enabling advisors to deliver deeply personalized portfolios at scale that are aligned not just to performance targets, but to the values, needs, and emotional drivers of each investor they serve.”
MyVest Integrates Tax-Efficient Transition Management And Proposal Generation Tools
San Francisco-based MyVest announces the integration of its tax-efficient transition management tool into its proposal generation capability in its Strategic Portfolio System. The combination enables advisors to generate personalized portfolios and transition outside accounts within a single workflow.Citing research from Cerulli Associates that only 48% of wealth management platforms have automated tax-efficient transition tools, while 24% perform transitions manually, MyVest says its Strategic Portfolio System saves time and improves efficiency by automating account transitions in a tax-efficient manner. MyVest is a subsidiary of TIAA.
"Transitioning a client’s legacy holdings to a new strategy is one of the biggest needs we hear in the industry, and a successful transition requires technology to execute it consistently," said Justin Kikuchi, Senior Director of Product at MyVest. “Advisors can now approach transitions with greater confidence, supported by a sophisticated tax-optimized portfolio management system.”
Praxis Acquires AI-Driven Lead Generation Firm WEALTHAWK
Newport Beach, California-based Praxis Solutions acquires WEALTHAWK, an AI platform that helps advisors identify opportune moments to approach clients by flagging “money-in-motion” events such as IPOs, M&A events, estate transitions and other key financial events. WEALTHAWK was built specifically for advisors and its database contains over 400,000 prospects, according to Praxis.
Praxis is an AI technology services firm that focuses on wealth and asset management firms. Bill Dwyer, who is now Executive Chairman at Praxis, was formerly at LPL Financial and was a key architect of its distribution organization.
“WEALTHAWK was among the first to focus AI technology on the enormous potential of money-in-motion events, and it has been rewarding to see the concept validated,” said Lori Thiel, founder of WEALTHAWK. “As we transition the business to Praxis, I could not imagine a team with deeper industry knowledge and technology expertise to lead WEALTHAWK into its next generation helping skilled advisors identify clients in times of need for valuable advice.”
Morgan Stanley Is First To Debut Aladdin’s New Generative AI Tool For Advisors
New York City-based Aladdin Wealth, an advisor platform from BlackRock, introduces generative AI functions for advisors. The new feature, called Auto Commentary, supports advisors in data insights that improve personalization of client services. Advisors who use Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s portfolio risk platform will have access to Auto Commentary beginning in October. Auto Commentary uses data points from Aladdin’s platform, combined with CIO market outlooks and client investment profiles, to provide advisors with relevant data insights. Advisors can leverage these insights to differentiate and personalize their services and drive growth.
“Auto Commentary leverages AI to integrate hundreds of analytics and firm-level market insights into a cohesive narrative,” said Chris Scott-Hansen, Managing Director and Head of Consulting Group at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. “By automating labor-intensive research, we enable our financial advisors to concentrate on what truly matters—building trust through assisting clients in navigating complex market dynamics.”
Grantd Acquires StockOpter To Develop New Equity Compensation Platform
Denver-based Grantd announces its acquisition of StockOpter, an equity compensation management company. Grantd plans to leverage StockOpter’s industry knowledge in developing a new AI-driven platform for planning equity compensation grants.
Grantd says its current equity compensation platform uses AI that is trained on regulatory standards combined with an algorithm that can produce personalized data insights about timing, taxes and exposure. The firm says its AI tools help advisors discover opportunities in the equity grants market, estimated to be worth over $400 billion a year.
“When it comes to financial planning, equity grants continue to be one of the largest ignored opportunities for clients to build wealth,” said Brian McDonald, Founder of Grantd. “StockOpter has played a pivotal role in helping users successfully manage equity compensation and with our AI-driven insights and automation, we can unlock even more value for advisors and their clients.”
Wealth Solutions Report can be reached at info@wealthsolutionsreport.com.
