Valence launches wealth management firm built around the client, not the advisor.

Valence today announced its launch, introducing a fundamentally new operating model for wealth management. Built on proprietary AI-native technology and a contrarian premise, the firm was founded on the belief that the future of the industry will not be defined by more investment offerings, more advisors, or new advisor tools. It will be defined by an entirely new approach built around the high-net-worth client’s personal and lived experience.

For individuals and families whose financial lives have grown increasingly complex, wealth management extends far beyond investments. Tax planning, trusts and estates, insurance, private investments, liquidity events, philanthropy, and intergenerational wealth transfer often span multiple advisors, firms, and institutions. Yet clients remain responsible for coordinating much of it themselves. Valence was built to manage every dimension of a client’s financial life, and, in doing so, carry this burden instead of it falling to the client.

“We’re not making the existing model more efficient,” said Founder and CEO Dan Petrozzo. “We’re replacing it.”

The founding team includes CEO Dan Petrozzo, former Partner at Goldman Sachs and Partner and Investor at Oak HC/FT; Chief Product Officer John van Moyland, formerly of Kensho; Chief Technology Officer Doron Gutstadt, formerly of Goldman Sachs; and Chief Commercial Officer Erick Goralski, formerly of Stone Ridge Asset Management and Deutsche Bank. Together, they bring decades of experience across wealth management, financial technology and company building.

The company is backed by a group of blue-chip investors including FinTech Collective, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Treasury, Gilgamesh Ventures and Armyn Capital.

An industry searching for growth

For more than a decade, wealth management firms have searched for sustainable organic growth while simultaneously facing pressure to improve operating leverage. Despite significant investments in products, technology, and advisor recruiting, organic growth has remained anemic. At the same time, the industry faces a convergence of powerful forces: the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history, increasing financial complexity, a shrinking advisor workforce, and the emergence of artificial intelligence as a transformational technology.

"Low-single-digit growth rates reveal a simple truth: with little differentiation, clients have had very few compelling reasons to change firms despite research indicating a meaningful gap between clients’ needs and value delivered," said Erick Goralski, Chief Commercial Officer of Valence.

Valence believes the next era of growth will come from creating a profoundly deeper, more holistic and proactive client experience -- one meaningfully better than what exists today and a legitimate reason for clients and advisors to choose something new.

Built differently, by design

Valence views AI not as a productivity tool, but as an architectural shift that enables a fundamentally different operating model. This model is capable of continuously understanding, coordinating, and managing the growing complexity of high-net-worth financial lives.

Unlike incumbents layering AI onto fragmented legacy workflows, Valence takes a first-principles approach to operational processes. These are the friction points that harm client experience and damage operating margins. Just as open architecture separated advice from product manufacturing, AI-native systems provide the scaled intelligence and coordination, freeing the advisors to focus on judgment, relationships, and guidance.

“Firms that own the intelligence that delivers the client experience will define the next generation of industry leaders. AI can fix what humans cannot scale and elevates what only humans should do,” said Goralski.

About Valence

Valence is a wealth management firm built for the complexity of high-net-worth financial lives. Where traditional firms offer fragmented advice across disconnected relationships, Valence delivers continuous understanding, coordination and execution through a proprietary AI-native operating model. Founded by leaders from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, Stone Ridge and Oak HC/FT, Valence is building the operating model that will define how wealth management is practiced for the next generation.

Media contact

Marni Lane

‍marni@valence.financial

617.671.8332