Astor raises USD $5 million to guide retail investors
Astor has raised USD $5 million in seed funding in a round led by Monashees.
Y Combinator, Goodwater Capital, Gilgamesh Ventures, 468 Capital, Valutia, Sunshine Lake, and executives from Stripe and OpenAI also participated.
Since launch, Astor has attracted thousands of users and connected more than USD $200 million in accounts. It plans to use the funding to expand its product, engineering, and growth teams and broaden its service lines.
The San Francisco-based company positions itself as an AI-driven adviser for retail investors who lack access to traditional wealth management. It connects to existing brokerage accounts, analyses holdings for performance, risk, and diversification, and then offers recommendations tailored to each user's portfolio.
Astor is registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment adviser and operates under a fiduciary duty to act in clients' best interests. It says this distinguishes its approach from investment tips on social media and general-purpose AI chatbots.
Retail gap
Astor is entering a market in which many younger investors make decisions without professional advice. It cited FINRA data showing that 61% of investors under 35 rely on social media for investment decisions.
Traditional financial advice remains out of reach for many smaller investors. Astor says advisers often require at least USD $500,000 in assets before taking on a client, while only about 35% of Americans work with an adviser, and the figure for adults under 30 is below 5%.
Astor was founded by Bruno Koba and Daniel Tulha, who grew up in Brazil and were struck by the different structure of retail investing in the United States. In Brazil, they said, customers are commonly paired with a financial adviser when they open a brokerage account, regardless of account size.
Koba previously worked as a fintech investor at Monashees and as a data scientist at Nubank, where he built machine learning models for credit underwriting. Tulha previously worked as a software engineer at Stripe and Robinhood.
The founders later joined Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch to build Astor for US households managing investments without access to an adviser.
Describing the problem Astor aims to address, Koba said many retail investors are navigating markets alone.
"We looked around, and everyone we knew was investing on their own, with many treating their brokerage accounts like a casino," said Bruno Koba, Co-founder and Chief Executive of Astor.
He said the lack of access to advice is closely tied to wealth levels.
"Back home, even the most basic advisor gives you the sense that someone is paying attention to your money. Here, unless you're wealthy, nobody is," Koba said.
Monashees said its backing reflects the view that more consumers want help interpreting investment choices rather than access to more products.
"Most people don't need more investment products, they need someone in their corner. Astor gives people the knowledge and guidance to actually take control of their financial future," said Fabiola Quinzaños, Partner at Monashees.
She also pointed to the founders' mix of investment and product experience.
"Bruno brings the investor perspective from his years at Monashees and the personal conviction of having lived this problem, while Daniel brings technical depth from building financial products at Stripe, and Bruno going from Monashees investor to Monashees-backed founder is the kind of full-circle story we love to be part of," Quinzaños said.