Savings and investing startup Acorns has acquired EarlyBird, an investment gifting platform for families. As part of the acquisition, EarlyBird will shut down, and all customer accounts will officially close on June 23. Customers’ funds will be returned to the bank account connected to their account. EarlyBird’s app allowed families and friends to gift investments to children while preserving memories through a digital time capsule. The investments would become the child’s once they turned 18, and they could use funds for things like paying for college, paying a down payment on a home, or seeding their first business. Acorns Early offers a debit card designed for kids and teens to help them develop financial literacy and manage their money. The company launched Acorns Early following its acquisition of GoHenry, a startup focused on providing money management and financial education services to 6- to 18-year-olds. Existing EarlyBird customers will be offered a free one-year subscription to “Acorns Gold,” a plan that offers access to all Acorns products, including Acorns Early. Customers will receive an email detailing the sign-up process. EarlyBird users will not be able to transfer their EarlyBird funds over to Acorns Early. If users want to continue their investing journey with Acorns, they need to withdraw their funds from EarlyBird and open a new account with Acorns. The company plans to integrate EarlyBird’s digital time capsule feature into the Acorns Early app at a later date. On EarlyBird, the feature allowed users to build out time capsules by recording videos at memorable moments in their lives.
OneStream’s enterprise finance platform offers access to 30+ plug-and-play, quantitative, and generative AI routines that enable teams to detect anomalies, summarize variances, streamline reporting and reconciliation
OneStream, a leading enterprise finance management platform, has announced the release of four SensibleAI ™ capabilities at its Splash 2025 user conference. These solutions are incorporated into the OneStream platform across planning & forecasting, close & consolidations, and reporting & analytics processes. These tools help finance leaders navigate uncertainty, identify risks, run what-if scenarios, uncover more insights, and drive confident decisions in a shorter amount of time. The developments come after OneStream’s Finance Talent Crunch Survey found that while 89% of finance students have enough experience with AI, only 54% of senior professionals do. SensibleAI delivers embedded tools to help automate manual work and free up time for higher-value analysis and decision-making. SensibleAI Agents are AI-powered chat assistants that retrieve data, perform deep analysis, visualize data, and execute tasks. They are embedded directly into the platform, allowing users to use natural language to gain actionable insights across their data and workflows. SensibleAI Studio is a growing library of 30+ plug-and-play, quantitative, and generative AI routines that enable finance teams to detect anomalies, summarize variances, and optimize system performance. SensibleAI Account Reconciliations automate a critical close process, reducing manual effort and improving compliance.
Betterment to integrate Rowboat Advisors’ portfolio management tech with its custodial platform to enable offering direct indexing, tax optimization, expanded single stock support and personalized investing capabilities to RIAs
Betterment, the largest independent digital investment advisor in the U.S., announced the acquisition of Rowboat Advisors, a leading provider of portfolio management software with advanced capabilities in direct indexing, tax optimization, and personalized investing. The acquisition strengthens Betterment’s technology platform and accelerates its roadmap for delivering sophisticated tools to RIAs through Betterment Advisor Solutions. Rowboat Advisors developed a suite of portfolio optimization software purpose-built for investors seeking greater control, transparency, and tax efficiency. Its solutions will be integrated into Betterment Advisor Solutions, the company’s all-in-one custodial platform for modern RIAs, beginning in the second half of 2025. The deal reflects Betterment’s strategic focus on expanding product capabilities for advisor clients and follows a series of product launches earlier this year, including Solo 401(k) plans and securities-backed lines of credit (SBLOCs). Following the acquisition, Kourtidis will join Betterment’s engineering leadership team as Vice President of Portfolio Management, reporting to Chief Technology Officer John Mileham. Advisors can expect the following portfolio management enhancements this year, as well as direct indexing in 2026:
- Expanded single stock support: Manage portfolios across a wider range of securities, building on Betterment’s growing ETF and mutual fund universe.
- Tools for more control and transparency: Run sophisticated simulations and use critical data to trade portfolios.
- Powerful automation and tax management: Optimize portfolios with enhanced rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, tax-smart portfolio transitions, asset location and intelligent withdrawals.
Investing.com’s AI researcher can condense months of detailed financial news into summaries, deliver SWOT analysis and run advanced stock screeners, all within seconds using exclusive access to vetted, real-time, data on global markets
Investing.co, a provider of financial news, tools and data to retail investors, has launched an AI-driven researcher called WarrenAI. WarrenAI promises to bridge the gap between Wall Street traders and retail player by combining the ease of ChatGPT with trusted premium market data and raw analytical power. The tool, claims Investing.com, is a personal, devoted financial researcher, with superhuman capacity and expertise, and which can answer just about any question with faster market reactions than a fleet of Wall Street analysts. The technology will launch in over 30 languages. While existing AI software such as ChatGPT source data from the entire web, WarrenAI has exclusive access to vetted, real-time, data on global markets. Investors get access to an array of over 1200 fundamental metrics spanning more than 72,000 companies, ETFs, mutual funds, closed-end funds and REITs, complete with a decade’s worth of historical data. In addition to condensing months of detailed financial news into summaries, WarrenAI can deliver SWOT analysis, provide the bearish and bullish cases for thousands of stocks, gather breaking Wall Street analyst outlooks, and run advanced stock screeners within seconds.
Startup Alpaca’s platform lets financial services firms and brokerages offer trading services especially U.S. stock market to their consumer user bases via an API
The U.S. stock market remains extremely attractive to investors around the world, simply because of its sheer size and liquidity. But it’s still quite difficult for investors in other parts of the globe to trade stocks on U.S. exchanges. Startup Alpaca has quietly capitalized on that opportunity by offering an API to financial services firms that lets them sell trading services to their consumer user bases. Alpaca claims it serves more than 5 million brokerage accounts, and has more than 200 financial clients in 40 countries. To build on that traction, Alpaca has raised $52 million in a Series C funding round to expand into more foreign markets, including the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The startup just opened a new office in New York, and it plans to use the fresh cash to obtain more regulatory licenses in different regions, similar to those it already has in the U.S., Japan, and the Bahamas, its co-founder and CEO Yoshi Yokokawa told. Alpaca will also use the proceeds to develop new products, add non-U.S. products like European and Asian equities, and support 24/5 trading of U.S. stocks. “When new banks want to improve their products for their customers, they prefer to work with modern partners because their customers want modern solutions. So that is how we are currently winning the market share over them,” Yokokawa added.
2025 Specialty Asset Management Outlook released by Bank of America says CRE investor confidence in the space is growing, signaled by rebalancing supply and demand, stabilizing valuations and increasing liquidity
Bank of America released a 2025 Specialty Asset Management (SAM) Outlook (PDF) on the market dynamics impacting commercial real estate (CRE), farmland, timberland and energy assets. The paper finds real assets play an increasingly important role in diversifying a portfolio as investors seek to position themselves for long-term wealth creation in a dynamic market. “Characteristics of real assets, such as generally being uncorrelated with traditional investments and serving as a hedge against inflation, are increasingly relevant in the current environment,” said Ken Shepard, SAM Executive at Bank of America Private Bank. “For well-informed, long-term investors, 2025 will be a good year to selectively build positions in certain real asset sectors.” The following themes are explored in the 2025 SAM Outlook:
- CRE demonstrates positive momentum: While CRE has weathered a range of challenges over the past few years, investor confidence in the space is growing, signaled by rebalancing supply and demand, stabilizing valuations and increasing liquidity.
- Farmland offers a pathway to stability and diversification: The 2025 crop year holds opportunity for knowledgeable investors as competitive pressures lessen and farmland values remain stable to slightly lower, allowing for more strategic maneuvering.
- Timberland bridges market uncertainties: Long-term investors with lower risk profiles in search of alternatives may find timberland an attractive investment, as biological growth is largely insulated from market cycles and geopolitical risk.
- Energy use increases globally: Myriad factors, including population growth, expanding manufacturing and rising living standards in emerging economies, have paved the way for increased energy usage. Looking ahead, the domestic energy supply will favor natural gas, renewables and other carbon-friendly sources.
Vanguard Introduces Fixed Income Model Portfolios for Financial Advisors
Vanguard is launching the firm’s first dynamic asset allocation fixed income model portfolios. Vanguard Fixed Income Risk Diversification and Vanguard Fixed Income Total Return join the firm’s lineup of model portfolios that provide financial advisors with access to broadly diversified, low-cost, and high-quality Vanguard-managed solutions. “Model portfolios empower financial advisors with streamlined investment manager research and ongoing portfolio construction and monitoring, so they can spend time on the things that really matter to their clients—like ensuring they’re meeting their investment goals,” said Brent Beardsley, Head of Advisor Solutions for Vanguard. Built to serve a variety of investment time horizons and risk profiles, Vanguard’s model portfolios support financial advisors’ portfolio construction needs so they can spend more time scaling their practice and deepening client relationships. Deeper client relationships lead to improved client loyalty and trust, according to Vanguard’s Advisor’s Alpha research, which can then assist with asset retention and referrals. Vanguard Fixed Income Risk Diversification and Vanguard Fixed Income Total Return model portfolios seek to outperform a market-capitalization-weighted benchmark—the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Index and Bloomberg U.S. Universal Index respectively—and allocations are recalibrated throughout the year to align with the Vanguard Capital Markets Model® (VCMM) 10-year forecasts. Vanguard’s Investment Strategy Group oversees the asset allocations for the models and Vanguard’s Fixed Income Group manages the fixed income funds included in each portfolio. The Vanguard Fixed Income Risk Diversification model portfolio features a weighted average expense ratio of 0.05% and is constructed for advisors and their clients in search of a highly diversified fixed income portfolio with exposure to global investment grade bonds intended to provide ballast against equity market volatility. Vanguard Fixed Income Total Return model portfolio is designed for advisors and clients seeking wealth accumulation and risk diversification from the fixed income sleeve of their portfolio. This model portfolio contains exposure to global investment grade and high yield bonds at a weighted average expense ratio of 0.08%.