Wavvest, a Chicago-based startup that has built an AI-native operating system for independent wealth managers, has added Vinnie Maliakkal, a former Charles Schwab vice president, as managing director and founding advisor to its in-house registered investment advisor. Chicago-based Maliakkal spent the last 11 years at Schwab, where he managed $1.4 billion in client assets for 450 households. 

Maliakkal joins Wavvest’s in-house registered investment advisor, Wavvest Wealth, launched in April. The company seeded the RIA with James Langer, who previously ran his own RIA, Redmont Wealth Advisors. He joined as president, bringing about $270 million in assets under management, and has also been tasked with advisor recruitment.

“For too long, advisors have been dealing with this swivel chair problem of, ‘I’ve got seven or eight different tools. None of them work well together. I need an operating system that can kind of do everything that I need,’” said Brendan King, co-founder and CEO at Wavvest. “That’s the objective on the tech side. And I think it’s great validation of the company we’re building, of the platform we’re building, that somebody who does have a $1 billion plus book is really excited and willing to move to Wavvest.”

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Any assets Maliakkal brings over will remain custodied at Schwab; Wavvest has custodial relationships with both Schwab and Apex Fintech Solutions. The startup announced a strategic partnership with Apex in March to deliver AI-powered financial planning capabilities to clients and advisors that custody with the firm, integrating Wavvest’s planning technology with Apex’s custodial data infrastructure.

Wavvest’s business model is to run the RIA internally while licensing its tech platform to external RIAs. But the in-house RIA is a big focus at the moment. King said a third advisor has already signed on to join in August, and there are three or four more teams in the pipeline.

Wavvest was founded in 2024. Its two co-founders have both advisory industry and external experience; King previously worked with JPMorgan Private Bank and Bessemer Trust (and spent a few years as a professional soccer player), while Sinon Bennett also spent a few years with JPM’s Private Bank and served for years as a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy.

King said that while he worked at Bessemer Trust, the technology stack was “broken,” with everything operating as a point solution. Then, at JPMorgan, everything worked together smoothly, and he wanted to bring that same type of tech to the RIA space. 

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“There’s just this huge opportunity in front of us to purpose-build something for our advisors, make it very AI-native and just give these advisors the operational leverage that they just never have had before,” he said. 

Wavvest has started with financial planning as the core of the platform, but it’s also building out CRM-like functionality and portfolio accounting tools. The company is using some of the third-party large language models, but everything else is proprietary.

The company raised $2.7 million in pre-seed funding led by venture capital firm Fenway Summer, but it’s looking to raise an official seed round in the next several months.