Finbourne Raises $70 Million in Series B Funding

Finbourne has secured $70 million for a technology that transforms dusty financial data into gold for artificial intelligence. Companies that operate in industries such as financial services and insurance are dependent on their data. More precisely, the extent to which they are able to utilize this data to predict the actions that individuals and organizations will take in the future is a process that is increasingly dictated by artificial intelligence. A new company called Finbourne, which was established in the heart of London's financial district, has developed a platform that assists financial institutions in organizing and making greater use of their data in artificial intelligence and other models. It has announced that it will be receiving funds in the amount of £55 million ($70 million), which it intends to use to broaden its scope outside the Square Mile.

The Series B funding round is being led by Highland Europe and AXA Venture Partners, which is also known as AVP and is backed by the eponymous insurance giant. The funding round values the company at somewhat more than £280 million ($356 million) after the money has been invested.

The Chief Executive Officer of Finbourne, Thomas McHugh, who was also one of the co-founders of the company, said with TechCrunch that he had the concept for the firm after working as a senior quant in the city for a number of years, the most of which were spent at the Royal Bank of Scotland. One of those years was 2008, which was the year that RBS, which was the largest bank in the world at the time, found itself on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of being overexposed to the subprime loan contagion.

Finbourne may have its origins in the manner in which McHugh and other members of his team overcame the challenge of constructing data services at their bank that were more efficient, but it has also evolved the concept, reflecting and defining the way in which organizations that provide financial services purchase information technology today. In the same way that businesses that have extensive sales operations might use Salesforce or a competing platform rather than developing their own software, Finbourne is betting that financial companies will increasingly do the same thing: they will collaborate with third-party companies to acquire tools to run their operations rather than developing their own.