The buzziest corner of finance AI is not the trading desk. It is the dull middle office, where staff keep thousands of portfolios in line with spreadsheets. A London-founded startup just raised $27mn to automate exactly that.
The company is MDOTM. It has closed a $27mn growth-equity round led by Expedition Growth Capital, it said. The deal takes the total raised to $36.5mn. Founded in London in 2015, with offices in New York and Milan, MDOTM sells an AI platform called Sphere to banks and asset managers.
Sphere now supports more than $100bn in assets across over 60 financial institutions, the company said. Its named clients include Morgan Stanley, Amundi, and Zurich Bank. The new money will fund hiring and a push deeper into the US and European markets.
The spreadsheet problem
Sphere is built for the grind between the big decisions. It reads market and macroeconomic data to flag shifts in conditions. Investment teams add their own views, and the software turns all of it into portfolios it can build and rebalance at scale. A generative-AI layer then writes the client reports and commentary on its own.
MDOTM splits the platform into three parts. One spots shifts in market conditions and generates forward-looking signals. A second, Portfolio Studio, builds and rebalances portfolios from those signals and a manager’s own views.
A third, StoryFolio, drafts the client reports. Behind it sits the MDOTM Lab, an academic network of more than 20 professors and PhDs working on machine learning, portfolio theory, and AI ethics.
The pitch rests on a squeeze every wealth manager knows. Fees are falling, and clients want portfolios tailored to them. Hiring an army of analysts does not scale.
“The work in the middle still happens in spreadsheets: rebalancing, keeping portfolios aligned with house views and generating client commentary,” said Steve Twomey, the Expedition partner who led the round. His argument is that this layer is where AI can finally do useful work.
A crowded race for the back office
MDOTM is not alone in spotting the gap. In the US, former Citadel quants raised $78mn to build an AI system for wealth managers. Banks are shipping their own tools too, such as Starling’s agentic assistant.
The same logic of automating the regulated middle office is spreading well beyond finance, from legal back-offices to hospitals. It lands as Europe’s fintech sector braces for consolidation, which tends to reward firms with real enterprise contracts.
Selling AI to sceptical institutions
Selling AI into investing brings a catch. Money managers answer to regulators, and they distrust tools they cannot explain. MDOTM itself operates in the UK as an appointed representative under the Financial Conduct Authority regime. Its answer is to keep humans in charge and to make the AI show its work.
“Asset and Wealth Managers are no longer asking whether to use AI in investment decisions, but how to deploy it at scale across thousands of portfolios while maintaining control,” said chief executive Tommaso Migliore.
The round also brings grey hairs onto the board. Twomey takes a seat, as does James Hays, a former chief executive of Wells Fargo Advisors with nearly 40 years in the industry.
Expedition backs software firms that have grown with little outside cash, which fits a company that took a decade and $36.5mn to reach this point. The bet now is that the boring middle of finance is where the next wave of AI money will land.
