- Aveni, an Edinburgh-based AI fintech, raised £11 million in Series A funding.
- Investment led by Puma Private Equity, with participation from Par Equity, Lloyds Banking Group, and Nationwide.
- Funding to enhance Aveni’s compliance and productivity solutions, Aveni Detect and Aveni Assist.
- Company plans to expand workforce from 35 to 70 within 12 to 18 months.
- New funding will support development of FinLLM, a specialized LLM for financial services.
- FinLLM aims to set standards for transparency, trust, and ethical use of Generative AI in the UK financial sector.
- Aveni to move operations to the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
Main AI News:
Edinburgh-based AI fintech firm Aveni has secured £11 million in Series A funding to develop a large language model (LLM) specifically tailored for the financial services industry. The investment round, spearheaded by Puma Private Equity and supported by Par Equity, Lloyds Banking Group, and Nationwide, will drive the company’s efforts to advance its current solutions, Aveni Detect and Aveni Assist, which focus on compliance and productivity.
Founded in 2018, Aveni is poised to significantly expand its operations following this investment. The company, which currently employs approximately 35 staff members, anticipates doubling its workforce within the next 12 to 18 months. The new funding will also facilitate the company’s move to new facilities at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, positioning it to scale effectively.
Aveni’s primary focus with this investment is the development of FinLLM, a financial services-specific large language model. This model is being developed in collaboration with Lloyds and Nationwide and aims to establish a benchmark for the transparent, responsible, and ethical application of Generative AI in the UK’s financial sector. The FinLLM will be designed to meet the unique needs of financial services, offering enhanced transparency, trust, and accuracy.
Joseph Twigg, CEO of Aveni, underscores the importance of industry-specific AI models: “The financial services sector needs AI models that prioritize transparency, trust, and correctness over more general capabilities. Our approach involves developing small, highly specialized language models trained on sector-specific data and reviewed by industry experts to address particular financial use cases.“
The market for AI LLM solutions is undergoing rapid transformation. Over the past year, there has been a noticeable shift from trials with generic models like GPT-4 to the development of industry-specific models that are finely tuned and trained on high-quality datasets. In regulated industries such as financial services, the demand for transparency, accuracy, and traceability has been a major driver of this trend, overcoming the initial hurdles to large-scale adoption of Generative AI.
Conclusion:
Aveni’s recent funding and focus on developing a specialized LLM for the financial services sector highlight a significant shift in the AI market. This move underscores the growing demand for industry-specific AI solutions that address unique sector needs, such as transparency and accuracy in regulated environments. As financial services increasingly adopt AI technologies tailored to their specific requirements, there will likely be a broader industry trend towards developing and deploying models that offer more precise and relevant applications, driving further innovation and growth in this sector.
