LONDON & NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Vega, an alternative investment technology company, founded by a team of former executives from leading hedge funds, private equity firms, and fintech scale-ups, today announced the successful closing of a $20 million Series A led by Apollo (NYSE: APO) and Motive. In addition, Vega has formed an enterprise-scale partnership with Apollo. These developments mark a significant milestone in Vega’s growth journey, as the company aims to become the industry’s leading operating system for alternative asset managers.
Building Technology for Alternative Asset Managers
Growing investor demand for private markets exposure is pushing alternative asset managers to transform how they service current clients and rapidly expand their service to new segments globally. Outdated client service technology and fragmented point solutions have created friction and hindered asset managers’ ability to scale, leading to substantial inefficiencies across their client service ecosystem.
In response, Vega’s mission has been to focus exclusively on the technology needs of alternative asset managers – building unifying solutions that enable scalable growth through Vega’s alternatives core system (AltOS), a comprehensive platform powering digitally-enabled client service across pre-trade, execution, and post-trade operations.
Alternatives Needs a Core
Vega AltOS will enable alternative asset managers to distribute products and serve clients through an “Alternatives-as-a-Service” framework, allowing any platform or client to connect to an alternative asset manager via API. This technology facilitates direct connection between an asset manager and clients via the client’s service or platform of choice – whether intermediary advisor platforms, technology partners, or direct-to-institutional – enhancing the integration of alternatives in client portfolios.
Establishing a New Industry Standard for Alternative Managers
Vega believes the transformation of alternative asset management client service and operations infrastructure – through a modern AltOS client core – is the missing foundational layer for the industry to transition from its current bespoke distribution framework to a more scalable flow operating model, driving down cost for alternatives distribution, client service, and private markets transaction processing.
Vega intends to partner with other asset managers and platform providers to build standardized private markets client service infrastructure and drive growth across the industry.
“We have reached an inflection point where alternative asset managers now need their own operating system to power the industry’s next growth phase. We are thrilled to welcome Apollo as an enterprise-scale client and investor as we bring a new standard to the alternative asset management space,” said Alexis Augier, Founder & CEO at Vega.
“We purpose-built Vega AltOS to meet the complex client infrastructure needs of high growth, private markets asset managers. Similar to our experience in the core banking and payments revolution, demand and volumes across all client channels for private markets investments have outstripped the industry’s infrastructure of generic, sub-scale point solutions. We are excited to partner with Apollo and Motive to innovate and solve this industry challenge,” Augier continued.
“Apollo’s contribution of Edna – one of the largest alternative employee investment platforms in the market – accelerates Vega’s AltOS vision for GPs. Edna was incubated at Apollo, in partnership with Motive, and epitomizes the innovative approach to global wealth solutions at Apollo. We are excited to continue expanding our range of GP solutions with the addition of Edna’s employee investment capabilities,” said Augier.
“Vega is building an innovative operating system purpose-designed for the alternatives industry to transform internal GP client operations. As private market products continue to expand across asset classes and penetrate all parts of a client’s core portfolio, asset managers must transform client operations to better serve our clients’ evolving needs,” said Jake Walker, Partner and COO of Client and Product Solutions at Apollo.
“As an early-stage backer of Vega, and our extensive portfolio of WealthTech assets at Motive, we saw the need for a GP AltOS platform to help accelerate the alternatives distribution flywheel. Managers have been underserved to-date and Vega’s AltOS is critical to address this gap,” says Ramin Niroumand, Partner at Motive Ventures.
About Vega
Vega is building the distribution operating system (“AltOS”) for the alternatives industry, empowering asset managers to efficiently service and scale their client base in an era of hypergrowth for alternatives.
Through a single unified Core engine, Vega orchestrates previously siloed offline processes across pre-trade, execution and post-trade client operations, while enabling asset managers to distribute their products through a scalable “Alternatives-as-a-Service” framework. Vega’s modular, API-driven architecture ensures compatibility with a broad range of existing point solutions and third-party stakeholders, setting the foundations for the first purpose-built infrastructure layer for the alternatives industry.
Vega’s founding team consists of alternatives specialists from investment firms such as KKR, Blackstone, Elliott and Goldman Sachs, along with top product and engineering talent from successful fintech scale-ups like Revolut and Trade Republic. Vega has raised over $28m in funding from Apollo, Motive, Picus Capital, Citi Ventures, and 60 senior executives from the alternative investment industry. To learn more, please visit www.vega-alts.com
About Motive
Motive Partners is a specialist private equity firm with offices in New York City, London and Berlin, focusing on growth equity and buyout investments in software and information services companies based in North America and Europe and serving five primary subsectors: Banking & Payments, Capital Markets, Data & Analytics, Investment Management and Insurance. Motive Partners brings differentiated expertise, connectivity and capabilities to create long-term value in financial technology companies. Motive Ventures is the early-stage investment arm of Motive Partners, focused on pre-seed through to Series A financial technology investments in North America and Europe. For more information, please visit www.motivepartners.com
About Apollo
Apollo is a high-growth, global alternative asset manager. In our asset management business, we seek to provide our clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum from investment grade credit to private equity. For more than three decades, our investing expertise across our fully integrated platform has served the financial return needs of our clients and provided businesses with innovative capital solutions for growth. Through Athene, our retirement services business, we specialize in helping clients achieve financial security by providing a suite of retirement savings products and acting as a solutions provider to institutions. Our patient, creative, and knowledgeable approach to investing aligns our clients, businesses we invest in, our employees, and the communities we impact, to expand opportunity and achieve positive outcomes. As of September 30, 2024, Apollo had approximately $733 billion of assets under management. To learn more, please visit www.apollo.com.
