AI for Retirement: The Opportunity Nobody is Talking About

Artificial intelligence is reshaping every industry. But while we have become accustomed to the impact of AI in high-visibility sectors like factory automation, communications and retail, some areas have not seen much technological innovation in a long time.

One of those is retirement management. Viewed as a conservative and slow-moving sector, it isn’t the first area you probably think of when you consider the opportunities for AI.

Think again.

Neotribe’s investment thesis around AI is to look for opportunities in all layers, from infrastructure to platform to application. Some of the most interesting, exciting, and potentially lucrative opportunities can be found in some of the most overlooked areas.

For that reason and many more, I am thrilled to announce that Neotribe has invested in Stax.ai.

Stax.ai is a native AI application for financial and retirement plan administrative operations. It helps third-party administrators (TPAs) of retirement plans like 401(k)s and 403(b)s to break free from the burden of overwhelming paperwork and monotonous manual processes so that they can efficiently scale their businesses.

Stax.ai is capable of reading, analyzing, and formatting huge volumes of manual and digital financial statements, without compromising accuracy, and also provides a suite of functions useful to TPAs like client onboarding, communications streamlining, workflow automation, secure document exchange, and compliance management. The software includes a client portal for plan sponsors which can be white-labeled for TPAs to preserve their own branding. And best of all, the only alternatives to Stax.ai in the marketplace are either manual spreadsheets or DIY software that TPAs would need to develop and maintain themselves.

This positions Stax.ai to radically transform the retirement industry, which manages approx. $37 trillion in assets. And so far, Stax.ai has experienced explosive growth, more than quadrupling its top-line revenue year on year, with stunning SaaS metrics, including a near-perfect retention rate. Stax.ai is a veritable case study in perfection for vertical software.

It is clear when speaking with Stax.ai customers what an impact the platform is having. Here, for example, is what Christopher Tipper, CEO of Stax.ai client Hunter Benefits shared:

“When I started in 1990, we only had floppy disks and no local network. Compliance reports were hand typed out and delivered in person. Many years later, Hunter Benefits is very pleased to be part of the first ERISA compliance support system born in AI. Stax.ai’s modern portal design is the unicorn I’ve been searching for. Plan sponsors, financial advisors, payroll vendors, and compliance consultants all seamlessly have access to the information they need.

Three unique features that convinced Hunter Benefits to join with Stax.ai:

1. The Client portal provides the Plan Sponsors with the instructions and information critical to helping them do their job.

2. Our staff instantly has access to a summary of communications between employees at the Client and Hunter Benefits.

3. Stax.ai provides the census automation and scrubbing that the TPA industry needs right now.

As Plan compliance becomes more complex and time consuming for plan sponsors, these tools are going to help the TPA in a very complex and competitive industry. This is a game changer."

The Stax.ai success story comes thanks to more than achieving strong product market fit. Stax.ai founder and CEO Narendran (Naru) Muraleedharan is an execution machine with a background in aerospace engineering, of all things. He has come from outside of the TPA industry and quickly built a reputation as the go-to industry expert.

Likewise, the Stax.ai team, who all predominantly work on-site in Scottsdale, Arizona, are a highly driven and efficient team with the energy of a startup from the pre-pandemic days. Backing a startup at this stage means betting on the leadership and the team, and Stax.ai truly exemplifies the energy and talent that we look for in a portfolio company.

Please join me in welcoming Stax.ai to the Neotribe family.