San Francisco-based Saris, which is developing an agentic workflow platform for banks and credit unions, has raised $28.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Austin, Texas-based 8VC. Other investors included Audacious Ventures, Homebrew, Btech Consortium, and Service Ventures.
With its platform, Saris expects to design agentic workflows that could save banks and other financial institutions enormous time and money. Tasks that once took hours could be carried out in minutes without human intervention. Up to 70% of consumer, mortgage, and commercial lending tasks could be automated, cutting costs by about a third.
Banks and financial institutions are racing to integrate AI not only for speed but to also meet consumer expectations. Earlier year, consulting firm McKinsey warned that “if banks fail to respond to consumers’ adoption of AI — particularly their use of AI to make financial decisions — their profit pools could shrink by an average of 9 percent globally.”
Similarly, a KPMG study in Canada found that 90% of financial services leaders in the country view generative AI as “critical to competitive advantage.”
Saris was founded by CEO Danial Jameel, Alice Dinu and James Dang. The trio previously founded Montréal-based edtech startup Oohlala Mobile with the backing of Y Combinator. It later merged with DubLabs and is now known as Ready Education.
“Our vision is a future where humans and AI work side by side in financial services,” said Jameel, who spent three years at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education. “The best institutions won’t replace people; they’ll give people the leverage to do more with less strain and better serve customers and members as a result.”
Jameel said the new capital would help scale Saris’ platform across more financial institutions, deepen integrations with partners like Fiserv, Encompass, and MeridianLink, and expand the teams that train and deploys AI agents.
“Financial institutions of every size are under pressure to modernize their operations, and most have been underserved by technology that wasn’t built for the complexity of today’s banking,” said Alex Kolicich, founding partner of 8VC. Saris is changing that, he added, pointing out that the company’s platform delivers measurable results without disrupting the systems.
