Steward, an AI-first compliance platform trusted with $100bn in investor assets, has raised $5m in a funding round to automate AML/KYC processes for complex investor onboarding.
The round was led by Motive Partners, with participation from Outward VC, Cooley, and a group of founders and operators. The financing was heavily oversubscribed and backed by prominent angel investors including Shai Wininger (co-founder of Lemonade and Fiverr), Mark Ransford (FinTech angel investor), Tom Keiser (former COO of Zendesk and Carta), Remy Astié and Ulric Musset (co-founders of Vauban), Mushegh Tovmasyan (founder of Zenus Bank), and Keith Grose (UK CEO of Coinbase).
The platform addresses one of finance’s most persistent operational challenges: onboarding sophisticated investors such as fund-of-funds, family offices, and offshore trusts. These clients, while highly sought after, are typically associated with complex ownership chains that trigger manual reviews, lengthy email threads, and significant delays. Steward says its platform enables same-day onboarding in 80% of cases, regardless of investor complexity.
Steward’s technology brings document collection, screening, risk assessment, and periodic reviews into a single workflow, with AI agents designed to interpret layered ownership and cross-border structures. The platform also features shareable investor profiles, allowing firms to securely share AML/KYC data with counterparties to accelerate dealmaking. Notable users include Connect Ventures, Unruly Capital, and IAB Group, alongside lead investors Motive Partners and Outward VC, as well as a number of Tier 1 institutional allocators.
Steward is an AI-first RegTech platform that automates AML/KYC compliance for regulated firms including private markets funds, banks, brokers, and UCITS managers. The company positions itself as critical infrastructure for firms that need to onboard sophisticated investors quickly and efficiently.
The company is dual-headquartered in New York and London and was founded by experienced FinTech operators. CEO Arik Oslerne previously served as COO at Vauban, the private markets infrastructure platform that was acquired by Carta, providing him with direct experience of where onboarding breaks down in institutional capital. CTO Moshe Lieberman was the first employee at Lemonade (NYSE: LMND) and an early engineer at Fiverr (NYSE: FVRR). Steward will use the new funding to expand its product capabilities and continue scaling its team.
Steward co-founder and CEO Arik Oslerne said, “Compliance has been a linear scaling problem for years. Firms can’t handle the amount of work on their plate with their existing resources, and face endless remediations and regulatory scrutiny. AI is the only way to put this to rest – and that’s exactly what Steward was built for.”
Motive Partners partner Hugo Bongers said, “Compliance is at an inflection point. Firms can no longer scale manual processes, and investors are demanding improved experiences. Steward is well positioned to become foundational infrastructure for investor lifecycle management.”
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