Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping financial services, bringing both exciting opportunities and significant challenges. Companies like Workhelix and Taktile are examples of firms leading the way, each with unique approaches to integrating AI deeply within workflows to optimize operations.
Workhelix, co-founded by James Milin, offers a tech-enabled service aimed at helping enterprises understand where to deploy AI effectively. The company's innovative method involves breaking down job functions across organizations and scoring individual tasks for their suitability for AI adoption. This granular approach seeks to prevent the common pitfall of businesses applying AI too broadly, which can often lead to disappointment. “Many companies are getting AI adoption wrong because they look to apply AI to whole divisions of their business,” Milin explained to TechCrunch. “That’s not a systematic, rigorous way to adopt generative AI and is part of the reason people are frequently so disappointed.”
The underlying philosophy rests on research by Erik Brynjolfsson, another co-founder, who emphasizes the need for human involvement alongside AI: “There’s this long tale of tasks where the machines don’t help much. You need humans to be involved. And then there’s other tasks where the machines are very helpful.” This dual approach, combining human oversight with AI capabilities, allows companies to navigate the complex decision-making required to adopt advanced technologies effectively.
Workhelix has attracted significant interest since its product launch in April 2024, with some enterprise customers including giants like Accenture, Wayfair, and Coursera. Its rising popularity is evident, as the company reported no paid advertising—customers are seeking the innovative solutions they provide. The startup recently secured $15 million through Series A funding, led by AIX Ventures and backed by notable investors such as Reid Hoffman and Andrew Ng, underscoring the confidence the investment community has in their approach.
On the other side of the spectrum, Taktile is carving its niche with its integrated decision automation platform. Founded by Maik Taro Wehmeyer and Maximilian Eber, Taktile has just raised €51.5 million in funding, bringing its total to €75.3 million as it looks to streamline risk management across the customer lifecycle for financial institutions. “From day one of our venture, we believed millions of lives could be improved by enabling organizations to make optimal decisions for their customers,” Wehmeyer stated.
The company’s platform allows risk experts to create, manage, and optimize automated decisions throughout onboarding, credit underwriting, fraud detection, and compliance monitoring. This year, Taktile quadrupled its customer base and grew over 3.5 times its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), highlighting the demand for its services across both fintech and established banking institutions.
Despite the growing recognition of AI’s potential, challenges remain, particularly as enterprises grapple with the need for precise automation and the shortage of skilled engineers. Taktile has positioned itself to bridge this gap by providing a shared platform for risk management teams, which can take full advantage of automated decision-making without sacrificing control or oversight. Evidence from clients like Zilch provides insight: they reported reducing service provider and usage costs by 50% and witnessed unprecedented improvements to their underwriting processes.
Complementary insights come from industry observers; Rob Moffat from Balderton Capital pointed out, “It is crazy…that businesses use separate tools for different decisions across their business when it is the same customer and data.” The inefficiency of disjointed decision-making processes is precisely what platforms like Taktile hope to resolve.
Collectively, the work being done by both Workhelix and Taktile underlines the reality facing financial services: the need to narrow down AI applications to those tasks where they can truly add value, rather than employing broad-brush strategies. Each company is demonstrating how to effectively pair human expertise with AI capabilities to carve out significant improvements and efficiencies across the spectrum of financial services.
Indeed, as Brynjolfsson suggests, “I think there’s a trillion-dollar opportunity here to create value.” With firms like Workhelix and Taktile at the forefront, the advances in financial services seem poised to revolutionize industries by optimizing how organizations operate at every level of decision-making.
The financial services sector is embarking on what may very well be the most significant technological revolution of our era. With new players setting the pace, traditional institutions will need to adapt continuously. Success lies not just in adopting technologies like AI, but ensuring they are utilized to support strategic decision-making effectively.
Both companies, through their unique methodologies, serve as models for how AI can be embedded thoughtfully within the workflows of enterprises, potentially transforming the industry to meet the demands of the future.