Daloopa is training AI to automate financial analysts’ workflows

Thomas Li noticed a significant issue while working at Point72, the hedge fund established by well-known investor Steve Cohen: the financial industry heavily relies on manual data entry processes, which are susceptible to errors.

“As a buy-side analyst, I experienced the frustration of manually collecting and inputting data to develop and update financial models,” Li shared with TechCrunch. “This tedious task consumed time that could have been better spent on analyzing and making investment decisions.”

After connecting with Jeremy Huang, a former software engineer at Airbnb and Meta, and Daniel Chen, an ex-Microsoft engineer, through their New York University network (all three are alumni), Li saw an opportunity to address the challenges of manual data entry with an automated solution.

The trio co-founded Daloopa, a platform that leverages AI to extract and organize data from financial reports and investor presentations for analysts. Daloopa recently announced an $18 million Series B funding round led by Touring Capital, with participation from Morgan Stanley and Nexus Venture Partners.

“Daloopa serves as an AI-powered historical data infrastructure for analysts,” explained Li. “This innovative approach to data discovery keeps highly competitive firms and teams ahead of the curve.”

Daloopa primarily caters to hedge funds, private equity firms, mutual funds, and corporate and investment banks. These clients utilize the startup’s tools to establish workflows for investment and due diligence research. By employing AI algorithms, these workflows automatically retrieve and deliver data to analysts’ financial models, reducing the need for manual data entry.

“Daloopa offers a fresh approach to accessing critical data for both buy-side and sell-side operations,” Li emphasized. “The time saved can be reinvested into research, analysis, or client interactions—empowering our customers to gain a competitive advantage in their research processes.”

However, it’s essential to maintain a degree of skepticism regarding Daloopa’s AI system. No AI system is flawless, and there is a risk of errors due to phenomena like hallucination, where AI models may fabricate facts and figures while summarizing documents and files.