.png)
By Aisha S Gani
November 24, 2025 at 7:00 AM UTC
The artificial intelligence startup Model ML raised $75 million as it looks to develop technology to replace much of the grunt work done by investment bankers — from creating pitch decks to working up due-diligence reports.
The early stage capital raising was led by investors FT Partners, and included Y Combinator Inc., QED Investors, 13Books Capital and LocalGlobe, according to a statement on Monday. The company, which was started about a year ago and is based in London and New York, raised $12 million earlier this year. It declined to provide a valuation in either round.
The startup’s technology is meant to speed up much of the drudgery that takes up hours of time for legions of Wall Streeters, Chief Executive Officer Chaz Englander said in an interview. For instance, its agentic AI technology helps private equity partners to write their first draft of their investment committee memo right off an email, a task that would otherwise involve a day of crunching marketing materials from PowerPoint presentations and private company databases.
Englander, 33, founded Model ML along with his younger brother Arnie, 28. Prior to this venture, he was behind a string of startups he built and sold, including Fat Llama, which was backed by Y Combinator when Sam Altman was the latter’s president.
With banking veterans including former HSBC Holdings Plc boss Noel Quinn and ex-UBS Group AG chairman Axel Weber on its advisory board, Model ML has already been able to win some clients on Wall Street and among the big consultancy firms, Englander said.
Model ML has a team of 45 people, and will use the cash raised from the funding round to bolster its onboarding team in San Francisco, New York, London and Hong Kong, as well as hire more AI engineers, Englander said.
Though the firm was founded in the US, he said its engineering team was relocated partly for cost effectiveness to London in the King’s Cross neighbourhood, where Google, DeepMind Technologies Ltd., and Meta Platforms Inc. have a significant presence.
Advancements in AI are spawning hundreds of startups that are promising to shake up a range of industries even as investors start to question if the technology has the potential to provide outsized returns in the near term. A tech stock rally sparked last week by Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang’s assurances that the AI economy isn’t a bubble quickly fizzled as those concerns returned to haunt the market.
But the skepticism hasn’t stopped entrepreneurs or venture capital firms from pouring money in their hunt for a big winner in the AI space.
