Swiss AI Finance Platform Unique Secures $30M Funding

A Swiss startup, Unique, which kicked off four years ago, just scored a hefty $30 million in a Series A funding round. This cash injection, led by London's DN Capital and CommerzVentures (the investment arm of Germany's Commerzbank), is set to fuel their dive into the hot "agentic AI" scene. Some of their earlier seed round investors also chipped in.

So, what's this "agentic AI" buzz all about? Well, it's all the rage in tech right now, though pinning down a single definition is tricky. The gist is, these AI agents are way more than your average chatbot. They're designed to make decisions and handle a bunch of tasks—think shopping online for you, sorting out your expense reports, or even boosting factory efficiency.

Unique, which was born in Zurich back in 2021, is spearheaded by CEO Manuel Grenacher, CCO Michelle Heppler, and CTO Andreas Hauri. They're all about creating an army of agentic AI to shake things up in the financial world—banks, insurance, and private equity, you name it.

Their game plan? Automate the heck out of workflows in areas like research, compliance, and KYC (that's "know your customer," if you're wondering). Unique's got a lineup of customizable AI agents ready to roll, including one slick investment research agent that taps into both internal and external knowledge to answer your questions in plain English.

Then there's their due diligence agent, which dives into documents like meeting transcripts and compares them with past evaluations to come up with questions that bank folks should be asking.

Originally, Unique was all about AI-powered video for sales teams, but over time, they morphed into something more like a "co-pilot for finance teams." And in 2023, they went live with Swiss private national bank Pictet, who also happen to be a strategic investor.

Unique's not just playing with the big boys; they've got other major Swiss financial institutions like UBP and Graubündner Kantonalbank on their client list.

With this new $30 million in their pockets, Unique's got its sights set on speeding up its global expansion, with a special focus on cracking the U.S. market. To date, they've raised a cool $53 million.