Fintech, future, data: Top data startups of Y Combinator
Explore the top five YC data engineering and analytics startups focused on the financial industry.
Carried away with those petabytes? Watch out even if your startup’s data health and management are top-notch. Chances are, your competitors in Fintech have just found a way to leverage client and company data better.
To catch up with the latest data trends, check out data startups backed by Y Combinator. Below is an overview of the top five companies focused on the financial industry.
Hey, this is our pilot episode of the Fintech Scaleup Radar newsletter for C-level execs of growing startups. Subscribe for weekly insight for scaling your business: top tools, advice from industry leaders, unnoticed trends, and more.
When our team sat tight to start the research for this newsletter, we wanted to focus only on the startups in analytics. But some intriguing tools in data engineering popped up along the way, so we just could not not share them with you.
Here is a brief overview.
Orbio helps financial companies invest in the most eco-friendly energy businesses by tracking methane emissions from the oil and gas industry via satellites.
Patterns leverages natural language to make financial analysis easy and accessible.
Datrics.ai created an AI-powered digital coworker to transform complex analyses into simple conversations for streamlined sales and finance operations.
PromptLoop rescues spreadsheet users with AI data analysis, simplifying most tasks, like web scraping and text processing, to file drag-and-drop system.
CambioML has tailored ML to extract and reconstruct text and data from PDFs, HTMLs, and forms, unlocking the treasure troves of legacy documents.
While AI is pushing the grid to a critical level, the Fintech industry has passed the point of no return. This means we’ll need more data to get better-trained models — and better-trained models to get more accurate data insights easily 🙂 But for now, the industry seems to be coping, and (almost) everyone wants to be data-driven. Let’s get a closer look at what’s on offer for fintechs.
Financial companies are under pressure to offer truly sustainable investment options. As we don’t see the end of the fossil fuel industry yet, people want to know that their money doesn’t finance global warming (or, at least, it finances the energy companies that are really trying to minimize the impact.) You should know a bunch of cool startups like Green Portfolio or As You Sow with its Invest Your Values search tools for individual investors. Orbio (YC S23) is a B2B solution that helps financial companies deliver the must-have sustainable investment service. Here’s how it works.
First thing that makes Orbio cool is that Stanford University named its satellite-based technology #1 (the most accurate and emission-sensitive.) To be clear, Orbio beats Maxar, a multi-billion USD competitor — and not just Maxar alone. Also, this technology is the first-time ever use case of satellite images for methane tracking.
Orbio Earth data visualization example
To put an end to relying on excel-based emission factors far from real life, Orbio created a unique data-driven platform. It helps operators be the first to detect emissions and seize reduction opportunities via top-tier measurements of methane emissions, covering fossil fuel infrastructure globally. The data is real-time, with deep emission root cause analysis — which is helpful for both financial businesses (more tailored portfolios) and energy companies (better sustainability ranking.) The process looks like this:
Orbio’s satellite network captures light absorption patterns that point to methane emissions.
Once detected, emissions get geolocated and quantified, with attention to wind and atmospheric conditions that affect its spreading. This data is then systematically aggregated for detailed emissions reports.
Depending on the needs, Orbio clients get emissions data weekly, monthly, quarterly and/or yearly.
If you’re more interested in boosting financial analysis capabilities or quality, pay attention to Patterns (YC S21). The startup leverages advanced integrated LLMs with autonomous querying and financial reasoning. This combination lets financial advisors conduct complex analyses and create captivating visualizations at ease, through a natural language interface. Patterns make financial data workflows and reporting grow beyond not only traditional spreadsheets but also SaaS solutions that lack flexibility.
Example of analysis and data visualization by Patterns
By connecting Patterns to their database, the user lets the tool analyze all the financial data (including every byte in Salesforce or Brex, among others.)
Patterns automates data collection, report generation, and other tedious analysis tasks.
Insights and advice gained help users optimize their client’s financial performance.
The tool adapts to the user’s financial data model and business context for better accuracy and relevance. This is like having a digital coworker who knows the answer to your every question.
Speaking of digital coworkers, Datrics has something great to offer, too.
Example of query and data visualization by Datrics
Datrics.ai’s (YC S21) digital coworker streamlines complex analyses, like Patterns. However, this low-code workflow automation platform leverages artificial intelligence to expedite enterprise sales and finance operations. With Datrics, you can create automated workflows, compare quarter results against each other, and share neatly presented data via custom dashboards. Datrics is easy to use and generates detailed insights, directly via your corporate messenger.
If it’s your company’s legacy data you need to dig into, CambioML might be the option.
CambioML’s sharable chatbot UI
CambioML (YC S23) offers machine learning tools for retrieving text and data from old documents. The tools extracts and reconstructs information from PDFs, HTMLs and forms (including footers, charts, etc.) and transforms it into JSON, CSV or Markdown. Meaning, you can use it for databases, LLMs, and what not. CambioML lets you redact all the confidential info during the extraction process, which is particularly useful for Fintech companies.
Like the abovementioned tools, CambioML guarantees no AI hallucinations. The startup’s open-source libraries are used by researchers at AWS and Google.
Finally, we have PromptLoop (YC S22) on our list of the top data-driven startups. This data platform helps investors, researchers, and businesses create and enrich datasets by leveraging spreadsheet data rows for models using web scraping, formatting outputs and more. All of this can be done without the steep learning curve. You can research markets, inform your decision making, and enrich data without hassle.
This straightforward tool supports informed decision-making by simplifying data enrichment and market research.
In a simple editor, you define the desired outputs for an AI.
Then, upload data (Excel, Google Sheets, CSV) and run the task you created on each row.
Create new datasets and keep repeatable actions as templates.
How PromptLoop compares against Google Bard, ChatGPT Browser, and Perplexity AI.
You can find more relevant startups on Y Combinators website. If you’re looking to build a new feature or product, or enhance your startup’s engineering power, see the best ideas here.
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