Itoflow raises £1.8m led by Balderton Capital
This article covers Itoflow, a startup that has raised £1.8m in a pre-seed funding round led by Balderton Capital to develop an AI platform that automates and governs investment research, monitoring and risk workflows for professional investment teams. The funding is to be used to grow engineering and quantitative research capacity and to help investment teams convert existing approaches into governed, agent-driven workflows across asset classes.
Itoflow has raised £1.8m in a pre-seed funding round led by Balderton Capital to develop an AI platform that automates and governs investment research, monitoring and risk workflows for professional investment teams. The deal matters because it targets a costly bottleneck for many firms: building and maintaining the infrastructure that lets quantitative teams test ideas, monitor portfolios and scale processes across asset classes.
Why it matters
Many investment firms spend years and significant capital assembling the systems and personnel to run systematic research and risk management at scale. Itoflow aims to reduce that barrier by converting a team’s existing investment approach into governed, agent-driven workflows that can run continuously across equities, bonds, ETFs, commodities and digital assets.
Early pilots with hedge funds and family offices suggest the platform could let smaller teams research and review more opportunities and monitor more portfolios without proportionally expanding their quantitative research headcount. For institutional clients, the option to deploy within their own infrastructure addresses data sensitivity and compliance concerns.
Inside the product
Itoflow’s product is built around AI agents that learn a firm’s research process, risk constraints and review criteria. Investment teams express their approach and thresholds in plain English during pilots; the agents then conduct quantitative research and backtesting, continually monitor portfolios and surface material changes with supporting evidence.
The company emphasises agent reliability and security. Its agentic infrastructure is designed to run for months or years while adapting as market conditions change, and clients can set actions and approval thresholds so human oversight remains central. Itoflow is also engaging with exchanges, brokerages and financial-data providers as it expands pilot deployments.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Balderton Capital and included participation from angel investors, among them Cleo founder Barney Hussey-Yeo. The pre-seed cheque is intended to expand engineering and quantitative research teams, accelerate product development and support commercial and regulatory work.
In the announcement, Sivesh Sukumar, Investor at Balderton, said:
The most sophisticated investment firms spend years building the systems and research teams needed to test ideas, manage risk and respond as markets change. Aditya and the team are changing the economics of that model, giving many more investment firms access to systematic capabilities that were previously too expensive and complex to build. They combine a rare depth of quantitative trading experience with the technical ability to deliver it at scale.
In the announcement, Barney Hussey-Yeo, Founder & CEO at Cleo, said:
Building Cleo has taught me that financial AI only works when it's intuitive, trustworthy and keeps people in control. Itoflow gets that. It gives investment teams sophisticated tools without asking them to give up their own process or judgment. I'm excited to back Aditya and the team.
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Founder perspective
Itoflow was founded in 2026 by three graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology. Co-founder and CEO Aditya Jha spent nine years as a quantitative researcher at JPMorgan, RBC and most recently Tower Research Capital, where he was Business Head for Mid-Frequency Trading. Other members of the founding team bring infrastructure experience from Apple, Google and Microsoft alongside additional quantitative research background from JPMorgan.
The company says the funding will be used to grow engineering and quantitative research headcount, speed product development and advance commercial and regulatory efforts. In the announcement, Aditya Jha, Co-founder & CEO at Itoflow, said:
Our long-term research goal is to build self-improving investment agents. As an agent supports a mandate over months and years, it should learn which approaches continue to hold up, identify promising new signals and recognise when an apparent edge has decayed. Within the parameters set by each investment team, these agents could become a powerful tool for continuous discovery.
The bigger picture
Itoflow sits at the intersection of AI and investment operations, a segment attracting interest from venture investors and angel backers as firms look to automate repeatable research tasks without ceding oversight. Its emphasis on client-controlled deployment and long-running agent governance responds to both operational and regulatory sensitivities in financial services.
The funding from Balderton and angel backers underlines continued appetite in the UK for companies applying AI to financial workflows. How well Itoflow can translate pilot success into broader institutional adoption will depend on demonstrating consistent performance, auditability and compliance as it scales across European and global markets.
They've invested in Itoflow
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