WealthManagement.com reported that most large independent registered investment advisers still lack a designated artificial intelligence leader, citing new research from Caddi, a Seattle-based startup that sells AI agents for back-office work. The column, written by technology columnist Nicholas J. Monterosso, also found that many firms that do name an AI lead do not hire the compliance staff needed to support AI use.
The study began with public SEC Form ADV data, which Caddi used to rank and identify the 455 largest independent wealth-management RIAs by assets under management, according to WealthManagement.com. Of those firms, only 42 have someone whose title makes them an AI or innovation leader. Of those 42 AI-leader staff, 24 hold AI-lead titles, 17 of those 24 started in 2026, and 12 sit at firms with more than $25 billion in AUM.
Hiring patterns show a wide gap. WealthManagement.com's figures indicate that 71.4% of firms with a named AI lead brought on people for AI tooling, whereas just 11% of firms without such a lead did so. Among firms that hired for AI, 56.6% made no compliance-archiving or security hire alongside those AI roles. Firms with a CTO but no AI lead still showed AI hiring at 32.7%, against 8% of firms with neither role.
Caddi's CEO told WealthManagement.com that the firms making real progress with AI were the ones that first assigned ownership of the work to someone. Caddi's CEO is Alejandro Castellano and its CTO is Aditya Sastry, both co-founders, according to a company profile on yespress.io. Sources differ on the founding year, with Preqin listing 2023 and Tracxn and yespress listing 2024. Caddi Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in Seattle, and The Wealth Mosaic reported that it raised a $5 million seed round led by Ubiquity Ventures, with Founders' Co-op and the AI2 Incubator also participating. Caddi's August 2026 press release announced an AI agent that builds and governs other back-office AI agents, and named a Barron's Top 10 RIA and the independent RIA The Planning Center among its customers. WealthManagement.com reported that Caddi works with about a dozen RIA shops with more than $1 billion in AUM. CADDi Co. Ltd., a manufacturing data company, is unrelated.
InvestmentNews published the same Caddi research a day earlier, after sharing it exclusively, and focused on large RIAs naming general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude in job postings. Coverage of that research said Copilot appeared in job posts at 34 firms since late 2023. The same coverage noted that Caddi's CEO argued very few firms can yet show that AI has changed what it costs to run the business. Caddi's figures measure job postings and LinkedIn profiles rather than actual AI deployment, and coverage of the research notes that they do not show usage or savings.
A separate study, covered by InvestmentNews in September 2026, is not part of the Caddi findings. It surveyed 68 RIAs managing about $1.2 trillion in AUM and found that 12% of wealth firms had reached a Leading AI status. The Caddi report is titled State of AI at Enterprise RIAs, according to a summary published by Politixia. WealthManagement.com's column does not name the firms in the study.