Former FTX US President Brett Harrison said his new company Architect Financial Technologies is ready to take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom.
Architect aims to give institutional-grade trading software to sophisticated individual investors and that integrating ChatGPT can help these customers better access exchanges by quickly generating code that executes complex trading strategies, Harrison said in interview with Bloomberg Television’s Matt Miller and Kailey Leinz on Tuesday.
“We think we can greatly lower the barrier to entry to writing those kinds of strategies by using natural language prompts,” he said.
Architect previously announced in April that it plans to provide “a GPT-4-powered trading algorithm code generator.” The Chicago-based firm is also positioning itself to serve institutional players like hedge funds and asset managers, according to Harrison. It will allow these customers to tap into both traditional trading ventures like CME Group Inc. as well as digital asset exchanges like Coinbase Global Inc.
The software company raised $5 million in January, though Bloomberg News previously reported that Harrison initially hoped to raise as much as $10 million at a $100 million valuation. Harrison had noted in a Twitter thread that he had trouble raising funds for Architect because investors questioned whether they should back a former FTX US executive. Harrison has not been publicly accused of any wrongdoing at FTX US.
Regulators have cracked down heavily on crypto in the wake of FTX’s collapse. The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed two lawsuits against Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global Inc. earlier this month, alleging that the companies were operating unregistered exchanges. Harrison said he hopes to see “a more incremental approach” from regulators, noting that this kind of litigation comes with complications.
“If the goal is to create regulatory clarity, this is certainly going to be a long, expensive path,” he said.
