Automatic logic behind many financial decisions – for example, the decision that determines whether a client is approved for a credit line is hardcoded. Often it doesn't change easily. For example, if your bank's credit manager wants to adjust the bank's lending criteria, you probably need to raise your ticket.
Entrepreneurs Maximilian Eber and Make Taro Wehmeyer met while studying at Harvard University, opposed the limitations of financial decision-making logic at Quantco, which builds AI-powered apps for corporate clients. In 2020, the pair decided to find Taktile, a startup, to make automated decision logic a more self-service process.
“We realized we were building the same thing over and over again, and decided to use learning around it to build a platform,” Wehmeyer, CEO of Taktile, told TechCrunch in an interview.
As I have written about Taktile's platform before, it allows Fintech companies' risk and engineering teams to create and manage workflows for automated decision-making. Users can experiment with data integration, monitor the performance of predictive models in decision flows, and run A/B tests to evaluate each flow.
For example, banks can use Taktile to predict how moving to apply minimum age from 25 to 21 to an account will affect customer termination. Alternatively, the loan provider can build a workflow that automatically extracts information from the document, summarizes cases, and recommends the next step in manual review.
taktile's backend dashboard. imagecredit: taktile
“[W]E invested [significantly] Wehmeyer said: “Users can build a complete picture of their final customer across every relevant decision moment, from initial onboarding to operational decisions such as fraud checks and collections.”
There is competition in the space. Noble, for example, offers a rule-based engine for editing and launching credit models, while vendors like PowerCurve sell comparable tools focused on unblocking risk teams.
However, Taktile appears to be growing in healthy clips. Repetitive annual revenues rose 3.5 times y/y in 2024, and the company's customer base recently expanded to include fintech companies such as Zilch and Mercury.
“[Legacy] Software is hopelessly outdated,” says Wehmeyer. “We've got a lot of pitches because our customers want an end-to-end solution, even if they're weaker than a specialized vendor in one case.”
This week, New York-based Taktile announced it has closed its $54 million Series B funding round led by Balderton Capital with participation from Index Ventures, Tiger Global, Y Combinator, Prosus Ventures, Visionaries Club and Openai board member Larry Summers. This will increase the total of the 110-person company to $79 million. The new capital will be directed towards product development and building Taktile's enterprise sales organization.
“We didn't need to raise from a money standpoint. We still had more than two years of runways, but the strong growth in 2024 saw a great deal of investor demand,” says Wehmeyer. “People care a lot about the economics of their units because fintech and financial services tend to be margin-based businesses. Vendor integration is what people are seeing this year.”