Model ML—an AI platform building the next generational platform transforming Wall Street and the City—announced it emerged from stealth with $12 million in funding. Led by YC and LocalGlobe, the round also included angel investments from some of the biggest banking and private equity names.
Launched by brothers Chaz and Arnie Englander—serial entrepreneurs who transformed the sharing economy with Fat Llama (Hygglo) and instant delivery with Fancy (GoPuff)—Model ML is on a mission to become the first trillion-dollar business built by European founders by redefining how professionals worldwide harness data and drive innovation.
Initially created for financial services but quickly moving into consulting and strategy teams, Model ML helps professionals make high-stakes decisions faster and smarter by removing the grunt work. The ability to bring all published information and data together in an instant frees top talent from low-value tasks that drain resources, hinder growth, and cost billions annually.
For finance alone, highly skilled, highly paid professionals lose five weeks a year on repetitive tasks like data retrieval, analysis, and reporting. However, traditional tools have failed to make an impact since they are not designed for the siloed systems and processes in play. They cannot meet precision, compliance, and security demands, nor do they truly understand the challenges professionals face.
Model ML’s platform is like building a bespoke AI brain for each organization, a complex cognitive architecture that mirrors how humans retrieve and analyze information. Unique to Model ML, each AI agentic system has been custom-built for individual clients and teams interacting with the system through an API or its intuitive user interface, which replaces Microsoft Office Suite and Google Drive.
By integrating into existing workflows and only pulling and processing data from a company’s bank of trusted sources, Model ML is secure and compliant by default, with greater accuracy than humans. Using the platform’s voice-first interface on a mobile or desktop, professionals can query the data and insights and automate the creation of spreadsheets, reports, and dashboards instantly. This way, Model ML makes querying data as simple as asking a colleague for information, delivering impact and value where other AI tools fall short.
Voice and real-time conversational AI are predicted to soar this year as people look to save time and alleviate the burden of typing. Model ML’s interface taps into this growing demand by offering a faster, more intuitive way to work that better suits today’s professionals’ fast-paced workflows and high-stakes decision-making.
While in stealth mode, Model ML gained significant traction (going live with over 20 customers), including some of the largest financial institutions in the world. Early customers report improved efficiency, with some rewriting their business strategies based on the platform’s impact. And this momentum reflects Model ML’s potential to transform how professional services firms, from finance to legal and accounting, operate.
Model ML is based in New York, with offices in Hong Kong and London, where its engineering team is based. And the company will use the funding to scale its product, expand its customer base, and transform financial workflows.
KEY QUOTES:
“Traditional software requires manual data gathering for emails, financial models, and presentations—but that’s changing. Model ML has rebuilt these applications from the ground up on top of advanced AI agentic systems, eliminating the need for manual data collection. We’re leading a transformation in human-computer interaction where you’ll simply speak to your device to accomplish what once required hours of manual work.”
- Chaz Englander, co-founder and CEO of Model ML
“Model ML is tackling one of AI’s biggest economic opportunities: enabling highly-paid knowledge workers to automate the vast amount of repetitive yet valuable manual work they do daily. The product is quickly changing expectations of both worker output and output quality. We’re rapidly moving toward a world where any single worker can do far more, far faster. Less than a year in, Model ML is already transforming the way the organizations it serves operate—a testament to Chaz and Arnie’s approach to building: an obsession with the customer and a relentless drive for velocity.”
- Ziv Reichert, Partner at LocalGlobe
