This week, Miami-based fintech startup Tilt emerged from stealth with $7.1 million in seed funding and a platform aimed at reshaping how wealth managers and advisors build investment portfolios. For Tilt CEO Andrew Peek, the mission is straightforward: bring a once-exclusive financial strategy to a wider market. “Direct indexing has historically been the privilege of a select few, but Tilt is bringing it to the entire wealth management ecosystem at scale,” he said.
Direct indexing allows investors to own the individual securities that make up an index, rather than holding an exchange-traded fund or mutual fund that tracks it. This structure gives greater flexibility in customizing exposures and harvesting tax losses. Until recently, the approach was limited to large institutions or wealthy clients because of operational complexity and cost. Tilt’s bet is that AI can strip away these barriers.
Building Custom Indices With AI
Tilt’s platform is built on what it calls an embedding engine, which continuously ingests and scores documents ranging from SEC filings to news articles and social media. By surfacing both consensus and emerging themes, the technology allows advisors and investors to construct indices tied to market narratives or client preferences. In practice, this means a wealth manager could create a portfolio aligned to themes like clean energy, artificial intelligence infrastructure, or supply chain resilience, rather than relying on static sector definitions.
The system also runs a tax optimization engine in real time, monitoring portfolios for loss-harvesting opportunities and replacing positions with suitable alternatives. Tilt says this allows investors to capture tax benefits while maintaining exposure to their chosen themes. The company is marketing its services on a cost-plus pricing model, starting at three basis points, with no account minimums.
Peek describes the combination of AI-driven research and tax optimization as a way to help advisors deliver portfolios that better match client values and financial objectives. At launch, the platform is available only via waitlist, with integrations planned for fintech platforms, turnkey asset management platforms (TAMPs), and registered investment advisors (RIAs).
Funding and Market Position
The $7.1 million seed round was led by Portage and Lerer Hippeau, with participation from Golden Ventures, Real Ventures, Cumberland Investments, and FJ Labs. Stephanie Choo, general partner at Portage, said, “Personalization and tax optimization are becoming table stakes in wealth management, and Tilt has built a platform that makes these capabilities accessible at scale”. The capital will go toward expanding engineering, growing go-to-market teams, and further developing the tax optimization engine.
Tilt enters a market where demand for customization is rising, particularly among advisors who want tools to differentiate themselves in a competitive landscape. Several firms, including incumbents like Vanguard and automated platforms such as Wealthfront and Betterment, have added or tested direct indexing features. Tilt’s strategy hinges on making those capabilities more flexible by leveraging real-time data and allowing users to design indices around a wide variety of themes.
The company’s launch timing coincides with a broader push in wealth management toward personalization, as investors seek portfolios that reflect not only financial goals but also environmental, social, and thematic considerations. In this context, Tilt’s value proposition lies in providing scalable tools to advisors who want to deliver that kind of customization without building infrastructure themselves.
As a venture-backed entrant, Tilt will need to prove that its technology can deliver consistent results while handling the operational requirements of advisory firms. Scaling integrations with custodians, broker-dealers, and portfolio management systems will be key to adoption. The company has positioned its technology as infrastructure rather than a consumer-facing product, targeting professional intermediaries as its primary customer base.
