[09/08/2024] University AI fintech startup Aveni.AI, co-founded by Dr Lexi Birch from Informatics, has announced one of the largest Series A investments in a Scottish business this year, amounting to £11 million. The round was led by Puma Private Equity with participation from Par Equity, Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide. Aveni combines AI expertise with extensive financial services experience, to create large language models (LLMs) and AI products designed specifically for the financial services industry. This investment will enable Aveni to build on the success of existing products, further establishing its presence across the financial services sector and introducing important new technology through the creation of FinLLM, a financial services-specific large language model. FinLLM is being developed in partnership with new investors Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide and aims to set the standard for the transparent, responsible and ethical adoption of generative AI across UK financial services. Post-investment, the team developing FinLLM will be based at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, a new futures-focused space for learning, research, and innovation at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Lexi Birch, a natural language processing expert co-founded Aveni with the support of Edinburgh Innovations. The company has since grown to a team of over 35 scientists and engineers who bring experience of building secure, data- driven solutions at scale from businesses including McLaren, IBM and BAE. The financial services industry does not need AI models that can quote Shakespeare, it needs AI models that deliver transparency, trust and above all correctness. The way to achieve this is to develop small, highly tuned language models, trained on financial services data, reviewed by financial services experts for specific financial services use cases. Generative AI represents the most significant technological evolution of our generation and we’re in the nascent stages of adoption. This presents a significant opportunity for Aveni and our partners. The objective with FinLLM is to set a new standard for the controlled, responsible and ethical adoption of Generative AI, outperforming all other generic models across our selected financial service use cases. Joseph Twigg Aveni CEO The University’s in-house venture investment team, Old College Capital (OCC), which participated in earlier seed-funding rounds for Aveni, continues to advise and support the company. We are delighted with the success of Aveni’s Series A fundraising, which comes at an exciting time for the company as it develops FinLLM in partnership with key industry leaders. For more than 60 years, the University of Edinburgh has been at the forefront of the development of AI, most recently establishing two AI hubs for causal AI and electronics and launching the Generative AI Lab last year. The establishment of the FinLLM team at the Edinburgh Futures Institute continues this track record. Andrea Young Head of OCC The impact that Aveni has made in delivering AI solutions to the financial services sector is already significant and there is huge opportunity for growth going forwards. We’re really excited to be backing Joseph, Jamie, Dr. Lexi Birch and the team as they focus on this next phase. With Scotland’s position as a prominent tech hub on the rise and with the increased regulatory burden on financial services businesses, we believe that Aveni is in a unique position to solve key challenges faced by the sector. Ben Leslie Investment Director of Puma Private Equity Related links Link to Aveni website Like to Alexandra Birch-Mayne's personal page Like to Alexandra Birch-Mayne's research page This article was published on 2024-08-23
