COMPANY

Name: Apteo

Legal Name: Apteo, Inc

Location: New York City, NY

Founded: 2017

Founder(s): Shanif Dhanani, Manan Shah

Website: https://www.apteo.co/

Social Media: 176 followers on LinkedIn, 41 followers on Twitter, 15 page likes on Facebook

MARKET – AI in Fintech

Size: $6.84Bn in 2019 (Source: Mordor Intelligence)

Projection:  Expected to reach $26.92Bn by 2024 at a CAGR of 31.5% during 2019 – 2024

Introduction

Apteo helps financial firms, analysts, equity researchers, asset managers, and retail investors make better investment decisions through an AI and data science-based platform. This platform collates publicly available data and organizes it securely alongside the user’s proprietary data in a single catalog. This helps users recognize patterns across large pools of data without having to build and maintain an in-house data science and analytics team.

The Product

The Apteo data science platform maintains a central repository of data by continuously updating information from public sources and the users’ proprietary systems. This data is automatically cleaned, normalized and organized in a ready-to-use format that complies with regulations and user-defined information-sharing hierarchies. Users can glean insights from this central repository through deep-learning and natural language processing tools in the platform.

According to the website, the platform offers access to over 2 million datasets from 400+ publishers with data across 50+ years. Totaling over 1 billion data points, this data also includes information from alternative sources, such as social media chatter, etc. which are traditionally not studied by financial analysts.

Apteo’s minimum viable product was a specific instance of the platform described above. Dubbed Milton, it was an AI tool designed to help hedge funds and individual retail investors in the US stock market overcome their emotional biases and make data-driven investment decisions. The tool offered deep-learning based analysis of publicly available historical data, including pattern recognition of performance trends, and portfolio strategy breakdowns of successful investors. Following a soft launch to waitlisted investors and the general public in September 2018, the product has been running in beta. In a press release, the company claims that Milton outperformed the S&P 500 by 16% over 11 months.

Origin and Founding Team

Co-founders Shanif Dhanani and Manan Shah started Apteo in late 2017 with the idea of bringing investors and financial analysts significant information advantage through AI and deep learning. The idea was anchored in their experience across data science, options trading, investment banking, and hedge fund management.

Prior to starting Apteo, Shanif Dhanani had spent 10+ years across data science with TapCommerce and Twitter, and management consulting with Booz Allen Hamilton. Throughout this period, he also continued as an independent options trader on the side, which is where he initially recognized the significant investment advantage the right data can bring. Dhanani holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business (New York University).

Manan Shah had spent 12+ years across asset management with multiple hedge funds, including Point72, Shumway Capital, Centrebridge Partners, and investment banking with Morgan Stanley. Shah holds a bachelors in Finance from New York University.

Performance and trends

On January 7, 2019, Apteo raised a seed round of $100k from Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerators, an early stage venture capital and accelerator program based in New York City. As of publishing this article, we could not find any publicly available information about the company’s revenue.