Itoflow has raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding to expand its AI platform for professional investment teams, with the round led by Balderton and participation from angel investors including Cleo founder Barney Hussey-Yeo. The startup plans to use the capital to grow its engineering and quantitative research teams, accelerate product development, and advance its commercial and regulatory work. Itoflow is positioning its technology as a way for investment firms to access sophisticated research and portfolio-management capabilities without building large in-house quantitative teams.
Building AI for Investment Workflows
Founded in 2026, Itoflow is developing AI agents designed to learn how individual investment firms research opportunities, assess risk, and review portfolios. Rather than imposing a predefined investment methodology, the platform converts each firm's existing approach into governed workflows that can operate continuously across asset classes including equities, bonds, exchange-traded funds, commodities, and digital assets. The company says its infrastructure is designed to give customers greater control over the reliability and security of agents operating over extended periods.
Itoflow was founded by three graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology and combines backgrounds in quantitative finance with experience at major global technology companies. Co-founder and CEO Aditya Jha previously spent nine years working in quantitative research at JPMorgan, RBC, and Tower Research Capital, where he served as Business Head for Mid-Frequency Trading. Other members of the founding team have worked on large-scale infrastructure at Apple, Google, and Microsoft while also bringing additional quantitative research experience from JPMorgan.
Turning Investment Strategies Into Automated Processes
The platform allows investment professionals to describe their investment approach, risk limits, and review criteria using natural language. Itoflow's agents can then perform quantitative research and backtesting, monitor portfolios continuously, and identify material developments while providing supporting evidence for their findings. According to the company, this approach is intended to help investment teams evaluate more opportunities and oversee larger portfolios without proportionally expanding their quantitative research functions.
Balderton Principal Sivesh Sukumar said the company is addressing capabilities that have traditionally required investment firms to spend substantial time and resources building internal systems and specialized research teams. He highlighted the founders' combination of quantitative trading expertise and technical infrastructure experience as an important part of Itoflow's strategy. Balderton believes the platform could broaden access to systematic investment capabilities that were previously difficult or expensive for smaller investment organizations to develop independently.
Focus on Long-Term Investment Agents
Itoflow's longer-term research ambition is to build agents that improve as they operate across investment mandates over months and years. Jha said these systems could eventually identify which approaches remain effective, detect emerging signals, and recognize when previously useful strategies begin to lose their advantage. The agents would continue operating within parameters established by investment teams, preserving human oversight while supporting ongoing research and portfolio discovery.
The company has also emphasized customer control as a central part of its product architecture, particularly for institutions handling sensitive data or proprietary strategies. Investment firms can define which actions require human approval, while institutional customers can deploy Itoflow within their own infrastructure so that confidential information remains inside their existing environment. This approach is intended to address concerns around governance, security, and control as financial organizations increasingly explore the use of autonomous AI systems.
Expanding Through Institutional Pilots
Itoflow is currently conducting pilots with hedge funds and family offices in multiple markets as it continues refining the platform. The startup is also holding discussions with exchanges, brokerages, and financial-data providers, potentially expanding the range of infrastructure and information available to its agents. Hussey-Yeo said his experience building Cleo reinforced the importance of making financial AI intuitive and trustworthy while ensuring that users maintain control over important decisions.
With its $2.5 million pre-seed round, Itoflow is entering the market as investment firms increasingly examine how AI agents can support research, risk management, and portfolio oversight. The company's focus on adapting to each firm's investment process rather than replacing it could help differentiate its approach in a rapidly expanding financial AI market. Itoflow will now use the new capital to strengthen its technology, expand its team, and move its institutional pilots toward broader commercial adoption.