TOP 100 MAGAZINE

Anirudh Badam and Vijay Krishnamurthy​

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In the bustling world of technology-driven finance, two luminaries stand at the helm of innovation, steering their brainchild, Alloan Inc., towards great heights. Meet Anirudh Badam, the co-founder and CTO, and Vijay Krishnamurthy, the co-founder and CEO, who are working to fundamentally change how AI is applied to asset-based finance.

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Anirudh Badam, a Microsoft Research Rockstar Awardee, is a former Director of AI at Microsoft and brings a wealth of experience spanning over 15 years to Alloan Inc. His illustrious career is adorned with more than 80 patents and peer-reviewed publications, a testament to his pioneering work in leveraging AI for solving various business problems at scale. With a PhD in computer science from Princeton, Anirudh's relentless pursuit of innovation has earned him prestigious accolades, including the MIT TR-10 recognition for breakthrough technologies.

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Complementing Anirudh's technical prowess is Vijay Krishnamurthy, a seasoned investor revered for his astute insights in asset-based finance. With a rich background in portfolio management and capital markets, Vijay's journey is marked by transformative contributions to multiple successful exits that have returned several billions of dollars to clients. Vijay brings his expertise in blending the art of investing with the science of extracting signals from a sea of chaotic financial data. Armed with a PhD from Princeton University, where he specialized in robust machine learning algorithms for finance, Vijay's academic rigor is matched only by his practical capital markets acumen honed first at Bank of America and then at LL Funds LLC.

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Together, Anirudh and Vijay coalesce their expertise to spearhead Alloan Inc., a trailblazing venture founded in early 2024 with a singular mission: to build a lending brain comprised of four different foundation models that work together to empower investors in asset-based finance. This technology is at the heart of Alloan’s product: a virtual assistant that empowers portfolio managers to eliminate the grunt work in building cashflow models whilst simultaneously curating and verifying financial data.

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We spoke with them about the world of cutting-edge technology for finance and they shared their insights on the intricacies of AI-driven investing in asset-based finance.

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What inspired you to start the company?

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Anirudh: The genesis of Alloan Inc. can be traced back to my candid conversations with Vijay during the COVID-19 pandemic which was a very challenging time for investors. It was right around this time when the long investments in AI started paying off and I proposed that we revisit lending as a whole by leveraging the latest breakthroughs in AI. I told Vijay that long-standing problems that he previously considered impossible to solve using technology are now approachable. This birthed the idea of a lending brain to aid experts in asset-based finance.

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Vijay: Our inspiration stemmed from a dual ambition—to create a company that resonates equally with investors and technology enthusiasts. With a joint experience of over two decades spanning technology and finance, our journey of Alloan began with the fundamental question: How do we apply AI that is relevant for finance – a discipline that is not necessarily scientific?

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What are a few of the most common problems your virtual analyst solves for lenders and portfolio managers?

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Vijay: At the core of our virtual analyst's mission are two pivotal solutions: one tracking loans from loan application to loan payoff/ default and another that enables a portfolio manager to operationalize and deploy an investment strategy within minutes.

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Anirudh: Indeed, in a dynamic macro economy, the traditional approach to predicting loan outcomes falls short. Asset values fluctuate, market sentiments shift, rendering static predictions obsolete. Our virtual assistant embodies the essence of neuroplasticity, helping continually absorb new datasets to provide an ability to be nimble in ever changing macro scenarios. What was deemed a default risk yesterday may not hold true today, given changes in interest rates for example. Our solution empowers lending experts to navigate these uncertainties with agility.

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Can you tell us a bit more about how this benefits investors?

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Vijay: Alloan technology brings together three core investor objectives. How do you trust the data that the market throws at you? How do you infer insights from such high dimensional data without a huge data science team? How do you incorporate your investment committee's views in reaching that inference?

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Anirudh: Our technology first verifies and tracks all relevant loan data on a tamper evident ledger, based on ideas from my previous experience with real world asset tracking. We then provide an on-demand model library that curates candidate cashflow models that are based on big data from lending markets. Finally, our custom built LLM-powered experimentation framework runs investor specific market price simulations for loan portfolios.

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How does your virtual analyst work?

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Anirudh: We crawl through lending market data and train/finetune four foundation models: an LLM to help understand data and summarize information, a computer vision model to extract information from raw data dumps, an autoencoder that can perform cashflow calculations quickly, and finally a multi-dimensional loan cashflow generator. When combined with state-of-the-art data/compute platforms (a ledger to track loans and a cluster to crunch numbers), out comes our lending brain powered virtual assistant that makes it easy for investors to leverage such platforms’ capabilities with ease for solving asset-based finance problems.

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Vijay: Investing fundamentally requires making bets with scant information but big data, continuously learning to quickly identify mistakes and course correct. The virtual analyst helps the investment team in all of these areas by significantly reducing the grunt work needed.

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Dr. Anirudh Badam: Co-Founder and CTO

Dr. Vijay Krishnamurthy: Co-Founder and CEO

Alloan Inc.
Website: https://alloan.ai

LinkedIn: alloan.ai: Overview | LinkedIn