Finalis

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The AI OS for private market deals

Finalis is building the AI system of record for private capital markets. Acting as a broad ecosystem for private market transactions (such as M&A, debt facilities, and capital raises), the platform optimizes compliance for deals, providing insights and analysis for independent investment bankers. It is evolving into a full-stack platform that automates deal execution, centralizes regulated communication, and transforms transactional data into proprietary intelligence. With over 1,100 active users and $20 billion in closed deal volume, Finalis is quickly becoming the Bloomberg Terminal for private markets, built from verified first-party compliance data, not fallible PDFs and spreadsheets.

🔗 Check it out: finalis.com

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💰 Business Model

Finalis generates revenue through a hybrid model that incorporates a SaaS and a success-based component. Its core platform monetizes through software subscriptions, while layering in upside from transactions facilitated through the network. Further, Finalis is beginning to monetize its data through dashboards, matching tools, and premium intelligence products as its AI and analytics layers mature.

📈 Traction and Fundraising

• Raised $10.7 million seed round in 2022 from ANIMO Ventures, Chaac Ventures, Tribe Capital, Ulu Ventures, and others

• $20 billion+ in total deal volume closed across 1,700+ active deals including M&A, capital raises, and debt

• 8,000+ private capital ecosystem users, including 750+ bankers

• Ranked top 14 in the U.S. and top 21 globally in closed transactions among investment banks in Q1 of 2025, according to Finalis

👫 Founders

💼 Opportunities

• Customer Success Manager

• Director - Customer Success

• Vice President of Member Experience

• Sales Account Executive

• Sales Team Lead

• Brand & Communications Manager

• Community & Member Engagement Manager

• Social Media Strategy & Content Creation Lead

• Brand Designer

• Procurement Associate

• Legal Associate

• Sr. Data Analyst

• Compliance-Legal Operations Analyst

🔮 Our Analysis

Private markets have become a massive area of investment. Already valued at $13 trillion, they are expected to grow to at least $20 trillion by 2030. Private equity has already dominated the industry, but private credit and other alternative investments have swept in due to a combination of market trends such as increasing regulations and interest rates, a downturn in mergers and acquisitions, and decreasing investable capital in private equity. 

While private transactions proliferate, traditional systems for compliance and deal management remail archaic and heavily inefficient. While not as regulated as public transactions, these deals are still scrutinized by multiple authorities such as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S. and their international equivalents. These agencies require extensive paper trails, ranging from emails to even private messages, to ensure compliance. However, private market deals still rely on PDFs, printed signature pages, and manual logging of thousands of emails. Top-tier lawyers and bankers regularly print and courier physical documents across cities to close multimillion-dollar transactions. These inefficiencies aren’t just inconvenient; they’ve led to costly violations. In 2022-2023 alone, firms paid over $2.5 billion in fines to regulators.

Meanwhile, large banks have steadily lost investment banking market share to newer advisors. For instance, boutique M&A advisory investment banks Centerview, Evercore, Lazard, Guggenheim, and Moelis have overtaken some of the biggest investment banks (known as bulge bracket banks) in deal value in the last 20 years. This development paints a picture of disruption at the top echelon of deals, where elite boutique banks have risen to the top quickly. Similarly, with respect to smaller deals, thousands of new firms have appeared, with some even as small as one person. 

These boutique advisory firms do not have the same infrastructure as the larger players, hindering their ability to scale their deal flow. One major hurdle is maintaining FINRA regulations, mandating the tracking of all communications, record-keeping, and approvals. While large firms are able to manage these processes via back-office capabilities, such as dedicated compliance teams, smaller firms are unable to develop as comprehensive an operation.

Finalis earned its first wedge of market space through its solution to compliance infrastructure. With founder and CEO Federico Baradello approaching this regulatory nightmare from a legal background, given his prior experience as an M&A attorney, Finalis has built the infrastructure to be a compliance-first cloud-based workspace, becoming an “AI-powered system of record.” Essentially, it allows smaller firms to affiliate their regulatory licenses with Finalis’s platform, which enables them to manage the entire deal lifecycle on-platform and consolidate all requirements needed for regulators. With Finalis, smaller firms can reduce compliance overhead for quicker scalability of transactions.

Not stopping there, Finalis has collected real-world data from over 1,700 deals facilitated on its platform. This dataset serves as a foundation for training and expanding its in-house AI tools. With AI-powered processes, including automated document generation, compliance monitoring, and individualized lead generation, it has insight into predictive analytics. And with over 8,000 users, including over 350 advisory firms using Finalis, it has a robust marketplace and matching platform powering an AI-driven deal ecosystem where finance professionals can source, match, and close transactions. 

Finalis is not just focused on easing compliance; it aims to be the definitive platform for any private market transaction. Bloomberg transformed public markets by centralizing data, communication, and analytics into one seamless platform: the Bloomberg Terminal. It became the backbone for traders, analysts, and institutions. Finalis is building that same foundational infrastructure for private markets: a system where dealmakers can manage compliance, execute transactions, and unlock proprietary market intelligence, all in one AI-powered workspace. It is building the online ecosystem to not only solve commonplace problems in finance but to drive a network effect on its platforms that benefits dealmakers and investors.

📚 Further reading

• Finalis Closes $10.7M in Seed Funding [Finalis]

• Experience the Future of Investment Banking with Finalis [ACN Newswire]

Written by Kanay Jay Shah

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