WithAI: Custom command centers for hedge funds

Custom command centers for hedge funds

WithAI helps institutional investors research stocks and track their portfolio using AI. Today's agents are powerful but insufficient. The training data quality and customization schlep prevent them from being seriously useful for investors. But WithAI has found the right form factor, context management, and consultative sale to help independent asset managers hold their own against the huge platforms' in-house projects. Our first client is "tremendously accelerated" (their words) when months ago they were "existentially threatened." Ben and Ian became fast friends at Princeton co-founding a technology investment firm. Ben became the founding researcher at unicorn Sentient Labs, where he built LLM coordination and security tech. Ian became an investor at Bridgewater Associates, where he spearheaded "how will AI affect the economy?" and "how can we use LLMs to invest?" His contrarian conclusion: the future of work isn't just "managing agents." That form factor works for coding, but non-verifiable work is structurally different. You check whether code is good by running it. But do you check whether a stock is good by shorting it? Fundamental equity hedge funds are elite, time-constrained, un-automatable knowledge workers in dire need of AI augmentation, so they make an ideal customer. But the combination of customization lock-in and huge ACV is not the real prize. If human knowledge work survives this decade, it will be AI-augmented. We're building that augmentation.

Active Founders

Benjamin Finch

Founder

Before WithAI, Ben was the founding researcher and chief of staff at unicorn AI lab Sentient. He oversaw prompt security and multi-agent coordination work and built a million-strong community. He received a bachelor's and a master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering Magna Cum Laude from Princeton, writing acclaimed theses on solar power investment and a novel blockchain design to solve coordination issues in Energy. He grew up in Maryland, Mongolia, Kenya, and Indonesia.

Benjamin Finch

Founder

Before WithAI, Ben was the founding researcher and chief of staff at unicorn AI lab Sentient. He oversaw prompt security and multi-agent coordination work and built a million-strong community. He received a bachelor's and a master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering Magna Cum Laude from Princeton, writing acclaimed theses on solar power investment and a novel blockchain design to solve coordination issues in Energy. He grew up in Maryland, Mongolia, Kenya, and Indonesia.

Ian McInnis

Founder

Before WithAI, Ian was an investor at Bridgewater Associates in all asset classes. He spearheaded the questions "How will AI affect the economy?" and "How can we use LLMs to invest?" At Princeton, he studied pure math, applied math, humanistic studies, and European cultural studies, graduating with a perfect GPA. Ian authored several papers (check arXiv) and one novel (check nowhere). He's a classically trained (albeit rusty) Shakespearean actor and opera singer.

Ian McInnis

Founder

Before WithAI, Ian was an investor at Bridgewater Associates in all asset classes. He spearheaded the questions "How will AI affect the economy?" and "How can we use LLMs to invest?" At Princeton, he studied pure math, applied math, humanistic studies, and European cultural studies, graduating with a perfect GPA. Ian authored several papers (check arXiv) and one novel (check nowhere). He's a classically trained (albeit rusty) Shakespearean actor and opera singer.

Company Launches

WithAI – Custom command centers for hedge funds

See original launch post

We're Ian and Ben, co-founders of WithAI. WithAI helps institutional investors use AI to research stocks and manage their portfolios. We forward-deploy to set up Multiplier, a secure platform that teaches AI how the fund works and connects it to all the needed tools, files, data, and context, so that investors can use the full strength of today's agents without taking on a second job as Claude-wrangler. After three months, we're live with multiple clients, doing >$100k ARR. If you know a fundamental equity investor, we'd love to meet them. Email ian@withai.co.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ZhD9Y60GQ

AI has radically transformed coding. But in finance, super-sharp, highly-paid people are spending 2026 combing through an inbox full of PDFs, updating models in Excel, and eyeballing Bloomberg charts. Multiplier packages everything necessary to change that! It includes secure inference endpoints, changelogs, ontology maintainance, guardrails, and VM infrastructure, and it's all hosted on client servers. With a mix of open-source protocols and WithAI elbow grease, Multiplier connects to all the research, tools, and data used at a given firm. We conduct face-to-face interviews so we can give AI the tacit knowledge it needs to work at your fund specifically; gaps get filled by user feedback to the AI. Our interface––more like an IDE than a collection of chatboxes––makes oversight, guidance, and participation natural. Early clients have called Multiplier "a tremendous proprietary knowledge flywheel" and "hugely insightful, a massive force multiplier." (In fact, that's where we got the name.)

Ben and Ian became fast friends building a deeptech investment group together (still going strong) and reunited because they'd independently hit on this idea. Ben, working on enterprise AI as founding researcher at Sentient Labs, saw what stopped his clients from accelerating like his engineers and wanted to productize the solution for the industry he knew best––investing. Ian, (profitably) overseeing an (undisclosably large) equity book at Bridgewater Associates, hacked together AI tools to help himself. They had a call to catch up one night and were spooked how they'd come to the same ideas.

If you know someone who picks stocks for a living (at a hedge fund, mutual fund, family office, etc.), we'd love to meet them. Get in touch at ian@withai.co. Thanks so much!