Brightwave
Boulder, US · Founded 2023 · 33 employees on LinkedIn · 5 known investors
Brightwave converts large volumes of unstructured information into actionable intelligence for analysts, operators, and executives across industries making high-stakes business decisions. The platform uses AI systems to reduce decision-making time while maintaining rigor and depth.
Also known as Brightwave Inc.
Founders & leadership
Brightwave was founded in 2023 by Brandon Kotara and Mike Conover.
Investors · 5
Also in the syndicate · 1
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$15M disclosed across 1 of 3 rounds · 2024
- $15MSeries AOct 2024 · 3 sources
Decibel Partners (lead), OMERS Ventures
Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Brightwave operates an AI-powered research and analysis platform aimed at finance professionals, including investment banks, hedge funds, private credit investors, boutique consultancies and large asset managers. Users upload documents and connect public and proprietary data sources, then use specialized AI agents to extract insights, generate reports, build charts and presentations, and support research workflows. The platform synthesizes material from earnings reports and transcripts, SEC filings, news, web content, sell-side research and internal knowledge bases, and is available through a web interface as well as a desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux.
The company positions itself around converting large volumes of unstructured information into actionable intelligence for analysts, operators and executives who face a tradeoff between speed and rigor in high-stakes decisions. More recently, Brightwave presents itself publicly as an agent infrastructure company building a compliance-ready foundation for connecting AI agents to the systems where work happens, with published work on desktop agents that operate on local files, applications and commands, cloud agents with machine access, and agentic memory. Its site also directs visitors to a related property, Tidebreak.
Founding story
Brightwave was co-founded in early 2024 by Brandon Kotara and Mike Conover. Kotara, Founder and CEO per the company site, was previously CTO of the federally regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse LedgerX and earlier served as technical lead for AI systems in Workday's human capital management products, filing his first deep learning patent in 2018. Conover, identified as CEO in 2024 press coverage, previously established and led open-source LLM engineering at Databricks, where he created the open-source model Dolly.
Business model
Brightwave provides a software platform, delivered via web and desktop applications, that finance and other knowledge-work teams use for document ingestion, AI-agent-driven analysis and report generation.
Traction
At the time of its October 2024 Series A, the company said it had roughly quadrupled revenue since its June 2024 seed round, without disclosing specific figures, and that its client base ranged from startups and boutique consultancies to hedge funds, private credit investors and some of the world's largest asset managers.
Latest developments
Recent company publications include research on giving a cloud agent access to a user's machine (June 2026), release notes on desktop agents with controlled access to local files, applications and commands (June 2026), and research on agentic memory (June 2026). The company's homepage now describes it as an agent infrastructure company building a compliance-ready foundation for connecting AI agents to work systems.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Brightwave is one of a number of AI-powered analyst and agent products that came to market in the two years preceding its 2024 Series A, serving investment firms and financial institutions across research and management workflows.
The company points to its proprietary knowledge graph and reasoning engine as the basis for analysis that goes beyond surface-level implications, and states that users report greater depth of insight and product functionality than alternatives they have tried.
Technology
The platform is built around a proprietary knowledge graph constructed from SEC filings, earnings call transcripts, breaking news, public internet content and hundreds of other sources, intended to model the structure of global markets and surface second- and third-order effects of new information. A reasoning layer sits on top of the knowledge graph to connect data points and identify drivers of asset performance. Users interact through a chat interface; the system synthesizes text, tables, images and audio into interactive reports described as living documents that update as new data and user insights arrive. Background AI agents produce reports, charts and presentations, and more recent work covers desktop agents with controlled access to local files, applications and commands, cloud agents with machine access, and agentic memory.
Go-to-market
Finance professionals and firms, including investment banks, hedge funds, private credit investors, boutique consultancies and large asset managers, as well as analysts, operators and executives in other industries making information-intensive decisions.
Geography
Reported as based in New York and Boulder, Colorado.
History
Founded and launched in early 2024, the company raised a $6 million seed round in June 2024 and a $15 million Series A announced in October 2024, bringing total disclosed funding to $21 million. Its stated focus has since broadened from financial research toward agent infrastructure, with 2026-dated research posts and release notes covering desktop agents, cloud agents and agentic memory.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 3
by search overlap
Companies competing with Brightwave for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 4
launches, deals, and filingsRelease notes describing desktop agent functionality giving controlled access to a user's local files, applications and commands.
Brightwave closed a $15 million Series A round led by Decibel Partners with participation from OMERS Ventures, bringing total funding to $21 million. Proceeds were earmarked for engineering and commercial hiring, strategic data partnerships, research and computing infrastructure to further develop its knowledge graph and reasoning engine.
$15M source ↗
Brightwave raised a $6 million seed round led by Decibel Partners with backing from Point72 Ventures, Moonfire Ventures and angel investors including executives from OpenAI, Databricks, Uber and LinkedIn.
$6M source ↗
Brightwave was co-founded by Brandon Kotara and Mike Conover in early 2024 and launched its automated research agent product.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Brightwavebrightwave.io · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Brightwave do?
- Brightwave builds AI agent infrastructure and an AI research and analysis platform used by finance professionals.
- Who founded Brightwave?
- Brightwave was founded by Brandon Kotara, Mike Conover in 2023.
- Who are Brightwave's investors?
- Brightwave's investors include Decibel Partners, Moonfire Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Point72 Ventures.
- How much funding has Brightwave raised?
- Brightwave has disclosed $15M raised across 1 of its 3 known rounds.
- Where is Brightwave headquartered?
- Brightwave is headquartered in Boulder, US.