Artificial intelligence fintech investment firm Arkera grabs £4m from investors including Brevan Howard’s Alan Howard

Arkera, a new fintech app which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to aid personal investing, has raised £4m from investors including the co-founder of hedge fund Brevan Howard.

Alan Howard led the funding round along with electronic trading firm XTX Markets, with additional input from payment services firm Docomo Digital, ex-Deutsche Bank chief operating officer Henry Ritchotte and other investors.

Arkera plans to use the capital to expand globally, and develop its machine learning platform which connects world events and news directly to investment products.

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“There is a niche in the market for artificial intelligence and machine learning to empower clients to make exciting investment decisions,” said Arkera’s co-chief executive Vinit Sahni.

The company has said it aims to help financial institutions increase revenues by “equipping their clients with the knowledge and confidence to make and drive investment decisions”.

It was founded in 2015 by Sahni along with Nav Gupta, both of whom have worked with some of the biggest names in finance.

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Sahni was the former head of fixed income and foreign exchange sales businesses at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank, and he has also worked at George Soros’s hedge fund Soros Fund Management.

Meanwhile Gupta has helped to build complex financial systems at global investment firm Citadel where he was global head of foreign exchange, and has previously worked at Warren Buffet’s hedge fund West End Capital and DE Shaw.

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