Stableton Financial and DeepJudge, two of the winners of this year’s Swiss Fintech Awards, have been reaping the fruits of the publicity accompanying the renowned startup competition, using the new-found exposure as an opportunity to expand to new verticals, launch new features and work their way to securing future funding.

DeepJudge hopes to expand to the financial industry

For DeepJudge, a startup that provides artificial intelligence (AI)-powered document processing tools, winning the 2022 Early Stage Startup of the Year Award brought in new customers and interest from a number of venture capital (VC) investors.

The young company, which has so far targeted the legal sector, hopes the exposure will help it expand to the financial industry, a space that could use the improved efficiency and productivity brought about its AI platform, a spokesperson told Fintech News Switzerland.

Founded just last year, DeepJudge has already earned several accolades for its document processing platform. A spinoff of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), the startup has developed a AI-powered solution that’s capable of understanding the context of a document and how it relates to other documents, extract key information, and proof check for inconsistencies.

Paulina Grnarova

DeepJudge’s “intelligent automatization” solution works a bit like an “out-of-the box assistant to legal professionals,” Paulina Grnarova, Co-Founder of the company said, and seeks to address the high amount of manual work done by legal professionals when going through thousands of documents to find, extract or redact relevant information. Instead, legal teams can put the DeepJudge’s platform to the task and focus on the truly strategic aspects of their work.

The solution is multilingual and can be integrated with any document management system. It’s also holistic, meaning that it isn’t specialized in one particular type of document, problem or task, and can be applied to various processes and business functions.

Although DeepJudge is still at an early stage and primarily focusing on signing new customers and further developing its offering at this point in time, the startup does hold the longer term ambitions of expanding overseas, “become a global legaltech company” and “revolutionize the workflow of legal professionals and anyone else that deals heavily with reading and processing documents.”

Stableton Financial increases its market footprint

For Stableton Financial, the operator of an alternative investment platform, winning the 2022 Growth Stage Startup of the Year title has created significant media attention and helped it increase its market footprint, Andreas Bezner, co-founder, managing partner and CEO of Stableton Financial, told Fintech News Switzerland.

Founded in 2018 and operating out of offices in Zug, Zurich, Berlin and Riga, Stableton Financial’s alternative investment fintech platform focuses on the sourcing of  privately-held growth companies and the creation of unique top-tier investment opportunities with improved liquidity. Investments are accessible on a deal-by-deal basis or via portfolios. Private investors can access them through bankable structures with relatively low investment minimums of US$10,000, no paperwork and a short-term investment horizon of up to about five years. In addition, professional investors have access to institutional-grade investment structures and processes that adapt to their way of investing.

Stableton Financial conducts research and due diligence when selecting deals. These deals are often sourced via secondary transactions at attractive discounts to past funding rounds, a stark contrast to other market participants that optimize on volume and list almost any deal on their platforms, Bezner said.

The fintech company currently works primarily with professional and institutional clients such as banks, wealth managers, family offices and pension funds, but is increasingly working directly with clients, as well. It also offers extensive partnership options to financial intermediaries.

Stableton claims more than 2,000 users in Switzerland and says more than 2% of all Swiss financial intermediaries are in its client base.

The winning of the 2022 Growth Stage Startup of the Year Award came on the back of a series of milestones the startup reached this year, including the granting of an asset management license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), as well as the closing of its CHF 15 million Series A round. Announced in July, the company said at the time that the proceeds will be used to scale its existing activities in Switzerland, broaden its technological offering and available investment structures, as well as expand internationally.

Andreas Bezner

“Both the Swiss Fintech Award and the funding announcement helped us to get noticed and recognized even more,” Bezner said.

“We find ourselves among Switzerland’s most visible players in the alternative investment space as we work on partnerships with the biggest banks. […] [Also,] we are receiving tremendous positive feedback and inbound interest from product investors, as well as strategic and VC investors.”

Bezner said Stableton is now working on the rollout of new products and platform features. “Within five years, we aim to be one of the global fintech leaders in the alternative investment space, building a globally-leading market network for alternative investments,” he stated. Last week Stableton also announced the expansion of their management team.