Pinegap has secured $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Stellaris Venture Partners to scale its AI-powered equity research platform. The capital will support the company as it expands its engineering team, builds out sales operations, and establishes an in-house group of former equity research analysts to serve institutional clients across the United States.
Existing investors including Inventus, Silicon Valley Quad, and DeVC also participated in the round. The startup, which launched in 2024, provides automated tools designed to assist hedge funds, mutual funds, and registered investment advisors with the repetitive, high-stakes tasks involved in financial research.
These institutional investors rely on equity research to evaluate companies, identify investment opportunities, and make informed portfolio decisions, making speed and accuracy critical to their workflows.
Customized AI for Financial Workflows
At the core of Pinegap’s platform are AI agents designed specifically for institutional investment research.
Unlike standard chatbots or search engines, the platform functions by integrating directly with a fund’s specific investment style, private data, and preferred output formats.
The company builds custom AI agents that operate on a push-based model, delivering reports to an analyst’s inbox based on market events or pre-set schedules. This approach aims to reclaim time for analysts, allowing them to focus on decision-making and conviction rather than manual data aggregation.
The system currently supports over 1,000 active AI agents across more than 100 institutional clients. These agents collectively generate upwards of 50,000 research reports every month, covering tasks such as company primers, earnings previews, and thesis trackers.
Founding Vision and Technical Strategy
The company was established by Ankit Varmani, a veteran with 15 years of experience in institutional finance and a former JPMorgan analyst, alongside Deepak Sharma, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology.
The founders recognized that many of the most time-consuming aspects of equity research could be automated using large language models, leading them to build Pinegap’s AI-powered research platform.
According to CEO Deepak Sharma, the platform is designed to mirror how a fund actually operates, turning the most repetitive parts of the research process into an autonomous engine.
With the new funding, Pinegap plans to further enhance its AI capabilities, strengthen its presence in the U.S. market, and help institutional investors automate increasingly complex research workflows.
