Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures

Are you attending Fintech Meetup 2026? Our team looks forward to meeting you there. Connect with Michael Sias, JD, MBA, LLM, Marie-Christine Razaire, and Jameel Ahmed. See you in Las Vegas!

Last week, the Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures team attended Go Restive 2026, hosted by Restive Ventures—an event designed for early-stage fintech founders. This year’s theme was “AI Meets Finance.” Conversations with founders across the ecosystem underscored one thing: innovation is exploding right now. AI is reshaping the foundations of financial infrastructure—from risk intelligence and workflow automation to entirely new analytical capabilities. Go Restive is an incredibly valuable gathering because it brings together a remarkable fintech community that’s building the future of finance. Throughout the day, we heard from Jason Wilk (Dave), Immad Akhund (Mercury), and other exceptional founders who have built and scaled companies in some of the most complex areas of fintech. Many thanks to the Restive Ventures team for organizing this fantastic event!

We're thrilled to announce that we participated in Levitate's $16M funding round. Huge congratulations to Jesse Lipson and the entire team at Levitate! The new investment will accelerate Levitate's AI innovation roadmap, including both internal AI capabilities and customer-facing tools that make it easier for small businesses to execute high-quality relationship marketing at scale. Levitate will also continue to expand its Service-as-Software model, combining intelligent automation with hands-on strategy to help customers drive measurable outcomes. Founded in 2017, Levitate is more than just a software platform – it's a catalyst for building authentic relationships. Levitate's Happiness Platform equips relationship-based businesses with the tools and coaching to cultivate meaningful interactions with clients, donors, referral sources, and prospects. Levitate allows customers to send tailored emails at scale, post to social media, keep in touch with clients via text, send surveys & event invitations, generate & manage reviews, schedule meetings, send handwritten cards, remember key facts about their contacts, manage their website and blog, and more. http://spr.ly/6048hCXT8

We're thrilled to announce that we participated in Letter AI's $40M Series B round. Huge congratulations to Ali Akhtar, and the entire team at Letter AI! The new funding will be used to scale product development, expand the team globally, and accelerate go-to-market efforts as enterprises move away from fragmented, low-adoption enablement tools toward AI-native platforms built for modern revenue teams. Letter AI is an AI-native revenue enablement platform that turns a company’s existing knowledge into real-time, deal-specific guidance for go-to-market teams. Rather than organizing static content and training, Letter AI dynamically generates personalized enablement and coaching based on live deal context, so sellers get what they need in the moment a deal is happening. Built from the ground up as a platform, Letter AI connects content, coaching, learning, and buyer engagement into a single intelligent system, driving higher adoption, faster onboarding, and more time spent with customers. http://spr.ly/6045hUGLc

Congratulations to Aaron Schumm and the entire Vestwell team!🚀🚀

Good morning from our NYC office!🗽We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and is ready to kick off the new week. Wishing you all a fantastic start! #NewYorkOffice #LifeAtNM

This month’s Founder Spotlight features Edward Woodford, founder and CEO of zerohash, a leading infrastructure provider enabling businesses to seamlessly unlock stablecoin and tokenization solutions for their customers. Edward shares the inspiration behind launching zerohash, insights on scaling a company while preserving #culture, and lessons learned from #fundraising. "I always say that the biggest lesson for me is narrowing one’s emotional bounds as there are constant ups and downs with building a business. It’s important to manage these for your own well-being but also to ensure you have the clarity to make good decisions. Building a company takes many, many years and ensuring you take a long-term view I think is critical." 🚀 Read the full article below and learn what's next for zerohash 🚀

Back in December, we shared that Vestwell had entered into an agreement to acquire Accrue 401k. This move would bring 30,000 employers and 350,000 savers who were formerly serviced by Guideline onto our platform, further expanding access to payroll-connected savings. Today, I’m excited to share that the acquisition has officially closed, and those employers and savers will now begin their transition to Vestwell. When I founded Vestwell 10 years ago, we started with a clear goal: to build a more connected infrastructure that makes it easier for people to save money for their future. From the beginning, payroll has been a big part of our story. Why? Because when saving happens right through a paycheck, it creates a turning point in how people build financial security. Automatic, consistent, and intuitive for employees. Simple, straightforward, and sustainable for businesses. We’ve built something meaningful over the last decade. And now we’re extending Vestwell’s impact even further as we welcome Accrue 401k businesses through this transition. Through this next chapter, we are committed to supporting every partner, advisor, employer, and saver and delivering a seamless experience at every step. Though this is a big step forward, our focus stays the same: continuing to help individuals save for the future they’re building. Learn more about the transition here: https://lnkd.in/e5VkQCUk #VestwellForTheFuture #RetirementSavings #EmployeeBenefits #401k

🚀 We're thrilled to announce that we participated in Oro's $3M funding round. Huge congratulations to George Fatheree, III and the entire team at Oro! 🎊 🏠 Oro is the first comprehensive housing benefits company designed to make it easy to offer homeownership and housing wellness as employee benefits. As a public benefit corporation, Oro believes that supporting employee housing wellness is good for employees and good for business. Oro’s solutions support the entire workforce - renters, future buyers, and current homeowners - and help companies boost employee recruitment, engagement, and retention. Through data-driven insights and ROI-focused solutions tailored to a company’s budget, goals, and culture, Oro helps turn employee housing stress into workforce strength. http://spr.ly/6040hDMGI

💼 Do you want to work at a fast-growing tech company? 🚀 Our portfolio companies are #hiring! Don’t miss out on these exciting opportunities: ⚡Betterment – HR Business Partner [New York, NY] – http://spr.ly/6044CA7zq ⚡Boldin – Senior Content Strategist/Editorial Lead [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6045CA7zS ⚡Chime – Senior Brand Marketing Manager [New York, NY] – http://spr.ly/6046CA7zs ⚡Levitate – Sales Development Representative [Raleigh, NC] – http://spr.ly/6047CA7zt ⚡Ladder – Partner Performance Manager [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6048CA7zQ ⚡Meanwhile – Backend Engineer [San Francisco, CA] – http://spr.ly/6040CA7za ⚡Modern Life – Director of Brokerage [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6043CA7zL ⚡Ocient – Senior QA Engineer [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6044CA7z0 ⚡The Helper Bees – Senior Data Scientist [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6045CA7zF ⚡Trust & Will – Lead Software Engineer [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6046CA7z2 ⚡Vestwell – Implementations Manager [New York, NY] – http://spr.ly/6047CA7zN ⚡zerohash – Senior Relationship Manager [Remote, USA] – http://spr.ly/6049CA7zf #TechJobs #CareerOpportunity #NewYorkJobs #SanFranciscoJobs #RemoteJobs