Black Ore, an AI platform for financial services, launched today and announced $60 million in financing led by a16z and Oak HC/FT.
The company plans to use the funds from the investment round to onboard new customers, “grow its team, and accelerate the development of additional AI-products across financial services.”
Black Ore offers “an AI and automation platform that accelerates core workflows for financial services businesses and simplifies the experience for their clients.”
As part of today’s launch, Black Ore also “announced its flagship product, Tax Autopilot, which combines its proprietary AI technology with federal and state tax codes and regulations to simplify the tax preparation and review process for Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) and accounting firms.”
Future product offerings will “target wealth management, financial advisory and planning, insurance services, and more.”
Black Ore aims to enhance “the financial services industry with a platform of AI automation solutions. As the industry’s revenue-based metrics rise, labor issues have emerged in tandem. Tedious admin and legacy technology, coupled with an aging workforce and decline of young talent, have impacted business’ ability to scale and service clients.”
Black Ore’s technology makes financial services professionals “more productive, freeing them up to add more strategic value to clients, accelerate their businesses’ revenue growth and expand profitability.”
Eyal Shinar, Co-Founder and CEO of Black Ore, said:
“When highly educated financial services professionals have to spend their time and resources on high-volume data entry and admin work, with little time left for strategic human thinking, industry innovation is sorely needed. For the last two years, we’ve been working with tax and accounting firms of all sizes to build an intelligent solution to arm accountants with the technology needed to alleviate resource constraints, scale services, and create more value for clients. Cloud computing changed the way CPAs delivered services and AI will have an even more profound impact on the entire industry and eventually the world.”
In addition to Oak HC/FT and a16z, the investment “included participation from other leading institutions including General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Trust Ventures, LionBird, SciFiVC, and SV Angel. Tech executives and angels also contributed, including Vikram Pandit (Former CEO of Citigroup), Tom Glocer (Former CEO of Thomson Reuters), Max Levchin (Founder of Paypal and Affirm), Jason Gardner (Founder and CEO of Marqeta), Mark Britto (EVP, CPO, PayPal), and Gokul Rajaram (Board Member and Executive from Doordash, Square Coinbase and Pinterest).”
