Desia Raises $3.3 Million to Expand AI Applications for Investment Professionals

Desia has raised $3.3 million in pre-seed funding to fund the development and growth of its artificial intelligence (AI) applications for productivity, automation and analytics in the financial investment industry.

The company’s product employs AI to help investment professionals use data and information in an automated manner, Desia said in a Tuesday (Sept. 24) press release.

“I recall sifting through data and information until the early hours during my time at Goldman Sachs in order to make fully informed decisions and strategies,” Raffaele Terrone, co-founder and CEO of Desia, said in the release. “With Desia the whole process would have been more efficient and successful. I wish it was available back then.”

Desia extracts knowledge and data about potential investments and performs analyses in an automated way, according to the release.

Its capabilities save time and resources for investment professionals who still sort through data and information manually and deal with data that is often unstructured, the release said.

“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,” Alessandro Amaro, co-founder and chief product officer of Desia, said in the release.

Desia’s solution already has users, and the company is looking to expand in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe, per the release.

Ross Mason, founding partner at Dig Ventures, which led the company’s funding round, said in the release that Desia’s founding team is positioned to address an essential challenge in the financial industry.

“Their innovative approach to automating data analysis leveraging AI promises substantial advancements in productivity for finance professionals,” Mason said.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said in June that the financial sector is among the “most exposed” to both the benefits and the risks of AI.

The benefits of AI for the sector include improvements for lending and payments, while the risks include more sophisticated cyberattacks, according to the BIS.

Eighty-three percent of bank executives are eyeing generative AI with both hope and hesitation, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and AI-ID collaboration, “Banking on AI: Financial Services Sector Harnesses Generative AI for Security and Service.”