Toronto-based wealthtech OneVest completed a US$20-million Series B funding round, the company announced Wednesday.
The funds will be used for growth and to develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools and product features to support onboarding clients and rebalancing portfolios with alternative investments, Amar Ahluwalia, OneVest’s CEO, said in an interview.
The firm’s first AI tools, including a feature that makes recommendations to financial advisors on next best actions, will be released later this quarter, Ahluwalia said. “The key value [proposition] there is giving the advisor the ability to spend more time with the customer.”
Advisors can onboard a client with alternative assets and rebalance a portfolio that includes alternatives, so the backend system supports the asset type.
The round was led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from new investors Allianz Life Ventures and TIAA Ventures and returning investors OMERS Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, Fin Capital, Luge Capital and Pivot Investment Partners.
Salesforce has experience working with large financial institutions and TIAA is a large global asset manager, so OneVest will benefit from its investors’ expertise to sign on large asset managers onto its platform.
BlackRock and Vanguard are already OneVest customers and the wealthtech will announce several more partnerships in the coming weeks, Ahluwalia said.
Alberta bank uses Google AI
Edmonton-headquartered ATB Financial has adopted Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence for its 5,000 staff, Google announced.
Gemini for Google Workspace will give staff access to generative AI in applications like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Sheets.
ATB has been a longstanding Google Workspace enterprise customer. The decision to implement generative AI tools came after a pilot program in 2024 where hundreds of employees used the technology for tasks like drafting marketing materials and summarizing content, Google said in a release.
Those who participated in the pilot reported saving up to two hours a week.
“In the pilot program, we saw that Google AI offered significant time savings and productivity gains for team members, allowing them to automate routine tasks, access information quickly, and collaborate more effectively, all while ensuring data is secure and trustworthy,” John Tarnowski, chief client experience and technology officer at ATB Financial, said in a release.