Kumesh Aroomoogan

As Quartz told it, Kumesh Aroomoogan once got yelled at by a trader at Citigroup because he stepped away from his news feeds to go to the bathroom and missed a market-moving headline. He went on to co-found Accern, a company that automated that job, and later founded ZeroDrift.

Watching News Screens at Citi

As an equity researcher at Citi, Aroomoogan monitored Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Dow Jones feeds on several screens, he told AlleyWatch. He wanted one platform that consolidated the news and alerted him to major events right away. "They were scaling on labor versus technology," he told Forbes.

Starting Accern in a Basement in Queens

In 2014 he teamed up with Anshul Vikram Pandey, then a data visualization PhD student at NYU, and the two began working in Aroomoogan's basement in Queens, New York, according to Forbes. In 2020 Accern closed a $13 million Series A led by Fusion Fund.

Rewriting Flagged AI Messages at ZeroDrift

ZeroDrift's system uses conventional programs that deterministically apply known compliance standards such as SOC 2 or GDPR. An LLM comes into play only after a message has been flagged, rewriting a compliant version of it, according to TechCrunch.

Raising ZeroDrift's Seed in Three Weeks

According to TechCrunch, ZeroDrift raised $10 million in seed funding with investors including a16z Speedrun, Reign Ventures, Pitchdrive and U&I Ventures. "We closed within three weeks, and we will be oversubscribed by 3x on the amount," Aroomoogan said.