Desia, a system of intelligence and AI productivity for investment professionals, has secured $3.3 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Dig Ventures alongside participation from 2100 Ventures (which backed Cubbit and Ephos), Exor Ventures, and Octopus Ventures (which backed Drift Energy and Harbiz).
The round was also joined by a group of angel investors, including Niccolo Maisto, Founder of FaceIT, Mark Ransford, Senior Advisor at CVC, and Massimo della Ragione, former Partner at Goldman Sachs.
The investment will fund the company’s development and growth, which ultimately aims to transform the financial investment industry. In addition, the company has its eyes set on the UK, the US and Europe.
What challenge does it tackle?
Despite the wider financial industries making significant technological leaps in recent times, investment professionals are still required to manually sort through significant amounts of data and information. Doing so is both time-consuming and costly. The data is often without any structure and productivity is severely impacted as a result. Desia aims to revolutionise the investment professional’s work stack.
How was the idea born?
The problem was experienced firsthand by Desia co-founder and CEO Raffaele Terrone during his time in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Barclays, and in Private Equity at ICAMAP Investments. At the same time, co-founder and CPO Alessandro Amaro and CTO Mehmet Öner Yalçin were leading the development of AI products for the investment team at Advent International, also faced similar issues.
The trio initially started working on Desia to help Raffaele streamline the analysis of his angel investments, following the success of his first company, BNPL unicorn Scalapay. However, they soon realised the commercial potential of what they were building and began to seek external funding to bolster the growth.
What does the company do?
Desia is Terrone’s first business venture since the runaway success of BNPL service Scalapay, which became Italy’s first unicorn company.
Using AI, the system extracts knowledge and data about potential investments and puts it to work by analysing the data in an automated way, saving investment professionals significant time and resources. Desia intends to transform the entire financial services landscape by harnessing the power of AI to extract and make the best possible use of data and information in an automated manner.
Ross Mason, Founding Partner at DIG Ventures, said: “Desia’s founding team, marked by their impeccable execution and deep market insight, is perfectly positioned to address an essential challenge within the financial industry. This reminds me vividly of the formative days at MuleSoft, where we similarly targeted a critical inefficiency in the market. Their innovative approach to automating data analysis leveraging AI promises substantial advancements in productivity for finance professionals.”
Alessandro Amaro, co-founder and CPO at Desia said: “We are privileged to have a team of brilliant people on board to help in our mission. We are tackling a tough problem that has challenged investment professionals for years. The complexity of unstructured data and inefficiencies in data processing are significant challenges, but the potential value we can deliver to our users is massive. With our experience in the investment industry and in building great products, we are well equipped to solve this problem and bring about meaningful change to the industry.”
