Arete Wealth, a leading broker-dealer and registered investment advisory firm, has partnered with Orion, a leading provider of wealthtech solutions for financial advisors and enterprise firms. The strategic collaboration aims to enhance advisory services and streamline operations for Arete Wealth’s Corporate RIA and affiliated Independent RIAs. Orion’s platform integrates portfolio management, reporting, trading, compliance, and client engagement tools, enabling financial professionals to drive efficiencies, improve client experiences, and scale their businesses effectively. Arete Wealth’s new partnership with Orion is a significant step in its strategy to provide advisors with the most innovative tools available, ensuring they can optimize their practices and better serve their clients. The partnership comes at a time of substantial growth for Arete Wealth, which has nearly doubled its Advisory Assets Under Management (AUM) since 2022. Orion’s platform will play a crucial role in supporting this trajectory, delivering seamless integration, advanced analytics, and superior client engagement capabilities to Arete’s growing network of financial professionals.
Allvue Agentic AI Platform supports alternatives industry for system navigation product documentation, querying portfolio data, interpreting compliance rules, surfacing trade and research insights, and creating investment tear sheets
Allvue Systems launched Allvue Agentic AI Platform, the first agentic AI platform purpose-built for the alternatives market. Designed to transform how investment professionals interact with technology, the Allvue Agentic AI Platform blends intelligent workflow automation with relevant context to deliver faster, smarter, and more intuitive decision-making across the investment lifecycle to help firms scale and deliver optimized returns to GPs. Allvue’s Agentic AI Platform is developed with the highest standards of enterprise security, data privacy, and model governance. Key protections include: Data Privacy & Isolation, Model Isolation; and Secure API & Access Controls. Allvue is also launching Andi, Allvue’s AI assistant, a browser-based knowledge agent that provides on-demand product guidance and navigation support across Allvue’s Credit Front Office suite. Initially focused on system navigation and product documentation, the Andi AI assistant will evolve to support more advanced use cases—such as querying portfolio data, interpreting compliance rules, surfacing trade and research insights, and creating investment tear sheets. Embedded directly into product headers and browser environments, the Andi AI assistant enables users to query product documentation, navigate complex workflows, and surface critical insights using natural language in a contextual, secure and seamless experience. Core Andi AI capabilities include: Seamless Installation, Flexible Interface, Context-Aware Intelligence, Guided Discovery, Continuous Learning, Data Querying (Upcoming).
Acorns acquires EarlyBird, an investment gifting platform that allows families and friends to gift investments to children while preserving memories through a digital time capsule
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.
UBS is using OpenAI and Synthesia’s AI models to create virtual avatars of its analysts, and turning AI-generated script from the analyst’s reports into a realistic, short-form video; expects to scale 5,000 videos from 1,000 per year now
UBS is using AI models to create video avatars of its analysts to share with clients. Tapping models from OpenAI and Synthesia, UBS has already built virtual versions of around 35 of its 720 analysts, with plans for a wider deployment. The analysts visit a studio where Synthesia captures their likeness and voices. Then, a language model reads the analyst’s reports, generates a script, and turns it into a realistic AI-generated video. The avatars are being deployed to help save analysts time and in response to the rising popularity of short-form videos driven by the likes of TikTok. “There are two drivers for it: the client driver and the efficiency driver…It is helping you scale your video capabilities in a way that clients are asking you for, and ultimately saving you time to do your research and meet with clients,” says Scott Solomon, head, global research technology, UBS. Signing up for an avatar is optional for analysts, while Solomon concedes the technology is not yet perfect, struggling with some accents. However, the bank is looking to ramp up production and put out 5,000 videos a year. “We publish about 50,000 documents a year, [but video production] has been fixed at about 1,000 a year, because that’s basically our studio capacity. But the number of views on those videos has gone up dramatically,” Solomon said.
BlackRock’s Aladdin integrates Passthrough’s digital onboarding—featuring standardized investor questionnaires, automated data collection, and embedded compliance checks—to streamline private market workflows and enhance investor experience on eFront
Passthrough and Aladdin, BlackRock’s technology business, announced a partnership that integrates Passthrough’s digital subscription technology within the eFront platform to offer a unified investor experience. The collaboration enables common clients – from general partners to asset servicers – to digitize their investor onboarding process and deliver scalable investor relations solutions for their clients. Now live, the integration enables eFront users to streamline and automate onboarding and fund closings for their investors. Using Passthrough’s technology, it’s now easier to distribute and execute subscription documents electronically, accelerating subscription workflow and reporting. Over time, the two companies will collaborate further to embed Passthrough’s full onboarding flow – including subscription agreements, tax forms, and AML requests – within eFront’s investor experience. Through this partnership, BlackRock will also leverage Passthrough’s technology to streamline onboarding for clients in its private markets business. Passthrough automates investor onboarding and compliance workflows for private funds. From subscription documents and tax forms to AML and KYC processes, Passthrough eliminates friction for both investors and fund managers. The platform connects directly to CRMs, investor portals, and fund admin systems to provide a seamless, API-first experience across the investor lifecycle.
BNP Paribas Asset Management issues natively tokenized money market fund on the Allfunds private permissioned blockchain for carrying out a cross-border transactions
BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNPP AM) has issued a natively digital share class of a money market fund (MMF) on the Allfunds blockchain. The vast majority of tokenized funds are based on existing funds and tend to tokenize current share classes rather than creating a new natively digital share class. The new shares were then used in a cross-border transaction with a French counterparty. BNP Paribas AM acted as transfer agent and dealing services provider, with Allfunds Blockchain as the technology partner. The appeal of the solution is the efficiencies and the ability to move away from batch subscription and redemption to on-demand transactions based on NAV valuations. Plus, there’s potential for faster settlement once the European Central Bank rolls out its wholesale DLT settlement solution. BNP Paribas took part in the ECB’s wholesale DLT trials last year. Currently there’s significant interest around the potential of tokenized money market funds beyond traditional institutional investors to include crypto-native institutions and retail investors. With this step, BNPP AM is exploring that potential as well. However, the retail-focused solutions tend to be on permissionless blockchains, whereas the Allfunds Blockchain appears to be a private permissioned one.
Silicon Data’s index tracks the hourly cost of renting a GPU by sourcing its pricing data across markets from hyperscalers and neoclouds and normalizing it using factors such as GPU types, platforms and hardware configurations
Silicon Data, a market-intelligence firm that focuses on the cost of GPUs, created what it says is the first daily index to track the specialized chips vital to powering AI. The company’s Silicon Data H100 Rental Index tracks the hourly cost of renting a GPU, according to founder and Chief Executive Officer Carmen Li. “There is zero transparency now for GPU costs,” Li said. “This is the first step, to help market participants gain transparency into the convoluted world of AI costs.” The goal is to turn GPUs into a benchmarked asset class that can be traded like any other financial instrument, Li said. The firm sources its pricing data across markets and technology companies, including so-called hyperscalers and neoclouds, according to Li. The index is normalized based on a variety of factors including GPU types, platforms and hardware configuration. That’s because GPU prices can be affected by a wide range of factors, including their brand, performance metrics, and hardware and software specifications. Silicon Data’s index is also based on historical data. It re-calibrates based on the importance of each factor at the time. The primary users of the index are banks that license and distribute it for internal risk management, hedge funds that license the underlying data, and asset managers or private equity firms that are financing or building out data centers where GPUs are used. Though the index itself can’t be traded yet, it provides a benchmark for traders and others to follow as they would a stock index. It also gives insight into the cost of goods for those building AI products or in need of GPU computing power.
Self-directed IRAs could allow retail investors to benefit from upfront tax deduction, portfolio diversification through access to private market assets, long-term growth potential and protection against inflation
Self-directed individual retirement accounts (IRAs) allow investors to put their retirement savings in private market assets like real estate, private equity, venture capital and crypto. The demand for self-directed IRAs has steadily grown as it has become easier for retail investors to open these accounts and tap into alternative markets. Anticipated major economic shifts will likely accelerate this trend in investor preferences. Investors concerned about the 2025 economic trends could benefit in several ways by opening a self-directed IRA (SDIRA) for their retirement savings. Tax Advantages: An SDIRA offers the same tax benefits as a traditional IRA: tax-deferred growth and an upfront tax deduction on contributions. Investors can tap into alternative markets while saving on taxes. Diversification: Investors reduce risk and the chance of significant losses by adding uncorrelated assets to a portfolio. A self-directed IRA with alternative assets does so by not having all eggs in the traditional market basket. Long-Term Growth: Many alternative investments offer higher growth potential. While these investments require a long-term focus, they can outperform the stock market over time. Inflation Protection: Alternative assets perform especially well when inflation is high. An SDIRA provides this protection for retirement investors. The coming months will force investors to manage inflation, uncertainty and interest rate risk, a painful combination. Fortunately, modern investment strategies and capabilities are up to the task. Through an SDIRA, investors can tap into alternative markets previously only available to high-net-worth individuals. These other assets provide further diversification and are another hedge against economic risks.