Nir Zuk, the American-Israeli founder of the cybersecurity firm, Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is investing a total of $6 million into a fintech startup that developed an artificial intelligence-based digital platform for buying and selling securities.
Founded in 2019 by Eldad Tamir, who is also the founder and CEO of Israeli investment house Tamir Fishman, Finq is an online financial marketplace for investment, pension, and insurance products. The AI-powered platform offers users personalized information for financial decision-making, investment recommendations, and an option to open an investment portfolio specifically tailored to individual needs.
Tamir described Zuk’s investment in the startup as the “beginning of a new financial world in Israel — smart, digital, and objective.”
“Using AI, we take away the public’s sense of detachment from financial issues of this kind and shift the knowledge and consumer power into the public’s hands, just as happened in other industries by companies like Amazon, Booking, and many more,” said Tamir. “With the help of smart technology, Finq’s platform eliminates the need for financial intermediaries and also helps individuals and investors avoid wasting valuable funds in the hands of those who hold conflicting interests.”
Since its inception, the Tel Aviv-based startup has raised about $5 million from Tamir and other private investors to build a digital financial marketplace that uses technology, psychology, and behavioral economics to create a personalized match for the user’s financial needs free from any intermediary’s interests.
The AI-based platform scans thousands of financial products worldwide while analyzing, ranking, and comparing them, with the goal of getting a perfect match to each user. Specifically, the system consists of three engines: the first creates a personal financial fingerprint for the user (AFI), the second creates a genetic mathematical profile for every financial product (FIB), and the third matches the user’s fingerprint with the products’ profiles to produce an accurate and personalized recommendation.
The marketplace is supervised by the Israel Securities Authority and the Capital Market Authority, and is bound by a portfolio management license and an insurance agency license.
Zuk’s investment comes after the Bank of Israel in December granted the entrepreneur and former top securities regulator Shmuel Hauser a conditional license for the establishment of the country’s second digital bank, Esh Bank Israel, Ltd. Zuk, a former engineer at Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies, set up the competing Santa Clara, California-based Palo Alto Networks in 2005.
