Ridgeline, an artificial intelligence-native investment management platform, has raised $250 million in a Series E round led by founder and Chairman Dave Duffield.
The invitation-only round valued Ridgeline at $1.425 billion and included Motley Fool Ventures, associates of Smead Capital Management, and Patrick O’Shaughnessy, CEO of Positive Sum.
“Great enterprise software starts with a team willing to rethink how an industry works,” Duffield said in a statement. “That’s what the team at Ridgeline is doing for investment management—building a platform designed not just for where the industry is today, but where it’s going. The opportunity ahead is tremendous.”
Ridgeline is the sixth company Duffield has launched, including two that eventually went public, PeopleSoft and Workday.
Ridgeline, which Duffield co-founded in 2017, currently has $750 billion in assets committed to the platform, with projections that the number will reach $1 trillion in early 2027.
Recently, Cabot Wealth Management, a $1.2 billion AUM firm, went live on Ridgeline Intelligent Outcomes, an AI-assisted software that now manages “daily reconciliation across positions, cash, transactions and related exceptions through a combination of in-platform AI agents and human oversight.” Cabot originally adopted Ridgeline in 2025 to help with client reporting for high-net-worth households and trade order management for blended equity and fixed-income accounts.
“Software is not our business. Our clients are our business,” Sonia Ernst, managing partner, Cabot Wealth Management, said in a statement. “So Ridgeline is working behind the scenes to allow us to help our clients. The morning reconciliation is the tip of the iceberg for us. But potentially, there’s additional ways to outsource and partner with Ridgeline not just as software, but as a teammate.”
Tower Bridge Advisors, a $1.5 billion AUM RIA based in Philadelphia, is also on the platform. The firm selected Ridgeline “as part of a long-term technology modernization initiative, migrating from a legacy portfolio accounting and trading system,” according to a release from January.
Ridgeline’s goal is to replace the investment management industry’s systems with a “single, cloud-native platform built for the AI era.” Ridgeline’s capabilities include trading, portfolio accounting, compliance, reporting and client servicing in a unified data model.
The firm also stated that rather than AI as a “bolted-on” layer, it is given “the full, permissioned context it needs to move from answering questions to safely taking action—preparing for client meetings, reconciling accounts, pre-trade and post-trade compliance—with built-in audit and governance.”
“The platform represents a step change from the previous systems Smead Capital Management relied on, helping our existing team do more, make decisions faster and focus more of our energy on our investors,” Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager at Smead Capital Management, said in a statement. “And the company’s vision and pace give SCM confidence in what Ridgeline is building for this industry,” said
The company will use the funding primarily to extend its AI capabilities, broaden its managed services offering, establish its customer base in Canada and Europe, and drive further product innovation.
According to Bloomberg, Duffield has invested more than $400 million.
