The Y Combinator alumni behind a defunct edtech startup are back with a new bet: AI agents that handle the grunt work choking community banks and credit unions.
Banks talk a big game about digital transformation. Behind the lobby screens and mobile apps, though, many still run on a creaking engine of manual document reviews, hand-keyed data entry, and paperwork shuttled across disconnected systems. A San Francisco and Montreal-based startup called Saris AI thinks it can rewire that engine — and it just raised serious money to prove it.
Saris announced on May 28 that it has closed a $28.8 million Series A round led by 8VC, the venture firm founded by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Audacious Ventures, Homebrew, Btech Consortium, and Service Ventures also participated. The capital will fund deeper integrations with major banking software providers including Fiserv, Encompass, and MeridianLink, and expand the team that trains and deploys Saris's AI agents across financial institutions.
From Edtech to Fintech
The founding team is not new to the startup grind. CEO Danial Jameel, along with co-founders Alice Dinu and James Dang, previously built Oohlala Mobile, a Montreal-based edtech company backed by Y Combinator, GoAhead Ventures, and Real Ventures. That startup eventually merged with DubLabs and rebranded as Ready Education. Now the trio has pivoted to a far larger addressable market: the operational backbone of American banking.
Their thesis is blunt. Community banks and credit unions are drowning in repetitive back-office tasks that have nothing to do with serving customers. Loan officers spend hours verifying documents. Compliance teams manually cross-reference data across platforms. The result is a bottleneck that slows lending, inflates costs, and leaves smaller institutions struggling to compete with fintechs born digital.
What the Platform Actually Does
Saris builds what the industry calls agentic workflows — multi-step task sequences that AI agents can execute under human supervision. Rather than offering a chatbot that answers questions, Saris trains its agents on each institution's existing workflows and systems, then turns them loose on the high-volume, low-judgment work that bogs down lending, compliance, and operations teams.
The company claims its platform can automate up to 70 percent of consumer, mortgage, and commercial lending tasks, cutting operational costs by as much as 35 percent. Institutions using the software have more than doubled output without adding headcount, according to Saris.
"Our vision is a future where humans and AI work side by side in financial services," Jameel said in a statement. "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."
Early Traction With Banks
The pitch appears to be landing. Community Bank CRO Matt Mayo said the draw was measurable return on investment rather than AI hype. "We needed an AI strategy with a clear ROI, something that can help us compete and grow using existing resources," Mayo said. "Saris provided a single, end-to-end solution that streamlines workflows and integrates with our existing technology for easy adoption."
Catalyst Corporate Credit Union CTO and SVP Diana Hennel pointed to the balance between automation and oversight — a persistent concern in the heavily regulated banking sector. "With Saris, we reduced manually intensive processes while improving accuracy and maintaining human oversight," Hennel said.
That emphasis on human-in-the-loop design is not accidental. Banks remain among the most regulated industries in the country, and fully autonomous AI decision-making is still a red line for most compliance teams. Saris appears to be positioning itself as an operational co-pilot rather than a replacement, a framing that may ease adoption among cautious risk officers.
The Bigger Picture
Saris is riding a wave of investor interest in agentic AI applied to industries still dependent on manual processing. A KPMG study found that 90 percent of Canadian financial services leaders now view generative AI as critical to competitive advantage, and the pattern holds south of the border. Major banks including TD and Royal Bank of Canada have been investing heavily in AI adoption, creating a top-down signal that smaller institutions feel pressure to follow.
8VC founding partner Alex Kolicich, who attended the University of Waterloo, framed Saris as a practical play rather than a speculative one. "Their platform delivers real, measurable results without disrupting the systems and teams institutions depend on," Kolicich said.
The $28.8 million round is sizable for a company selling into the traditionally cautious banking sector. But the opportunity is enormous: thousands of community banks and credit unions across North America still process loans and compliance checks the way they did a decade ago. If Saris can prove its agents reliably handle 70 percent of that workload without tripping regulatory wires, it will not lack for customers.
The bigger question is whether agentic AI can move from pilot programs to production-grade infrastructure inside institutions where a single error can trigger regulatory action. Saris is betting nearly $29 million that the answer is yes.
“Our vision is a future where humans and AI work side by side in financial services.”— Danial Jameel, CEO, Saris AI