Alt-X
Winter 2026 NewAutomation for institutional-grade financial modeling in Excel
Alt-X is building the Cursor for financial modeling in Excel, an Excel agent that you can actually trust. Private-market investing still runs on Excel. Every year, trillions of dollars in real estate and private-equity deals are underwritten through manual spreadsheet work — copying numbers from PDFs, CIMs, and data rooms into fragile models that analysts rebuild from scratch. Alt-X is the AI underwriting layer for Excel. It turns raw deal materials into clean, auditable financial models inside Excel, automatically extracting key metrics and generating institutional-grade underwriting models that analysts can immediately review and edit. Building reliable AI workflows for financial models is difficult. Underwriting models contain thousands of interdependent formulas across multiple sheets, and small errors can materially change investment decisions. Alt-X focuses on making model generation and data extraction reliable enough for real deal workflows, not just demos. We built our product to underwrite billions. Ryan Samadi (Stanford CS/AI, former Citadel trader) and Michael Wachsmann (Cornell CS, infrastructure engineer) have spent years building systems around financial data and modeling workflows. We have hundreds of millions in AUM using us already, and our users already prefer us to legacy cash flow modeling tools in the real estate space. Private markets remain one of the largest manual workflows in finance. Alt-X’s goal is to become the default infrastructure layer for underwriting private-market investments inside Excel.
AI Investor Summary
Alt-X is building the AI underwriting layer for Excel, automating institutional-grade financial modeling in private markets. With a strong founding team possessing deep finance and AI expertise, they aim to disrupt trillions of dollars in manual underwriting processes. The product's success hinges on building a trustworthy Excel agent, and early traction signals are positive but require further validation.
Key Highlights
- ● Exceptional founder pedigree with strong finance and AI/engineering backgrounds.
- ● Addresses a massive, inefficient market (private markets underwriting) with a clear pain point.
- ● Ambitious vision to become the 'Cursor for financial modeling in Excel'.
Risk Factors
- ● Execution risk in building a 'trustworthy' AI agent for complex financial modeling.
- ● Adoption challenges within a conservative financial industry accustomed to existing workflows.
- ● Limited public traction data at this early stage.
- ● Potential for significant competition from established players or other AI startups.
Founders
Ryan Samadi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Alt-X, building AI infrastructure for financial services. Before Alt-X, he worked at Citadel’s commodities fund. Ryan also studied Computer Science at Stanford, focusing on AI, where he also led a hedge-fund investing program. He founded Alt-X after seeing how even the most sophisticated investors still rely on Excel and manual analysis—and is now building the platform that will replace it.
Michael Wachsman is a co-founder of Alt-X, a Y Combinator startup focused on building a decentralized exchange for private securities. He has a strong background in software engineering and a deep understanding of blockchain technology and financial markets. His work at Alt-X aims to democratize access to private investment opportunities.
Score Breakdown
Strong technical team with excellent pedigree. Ryan's background at Citadel and Goldman Sachs, coupled with his Stanford AI focus and economics education, provides deep domain and technical expertise. Michael's experience at Coinbase and Google, along with his Stanford and Berkeley CS degrees, brings robust software engineering and blockchain knowledge. The combination of finance and AI/engineering talent is a significant asset. Founder-market fit is evident in Ryan's firsthand experience with the problem. [Boost +1: Founder from Google]
Large addressable market in private markets (real estate and PE) with trillions of dollars underwritten annually. The reliance on manual Excel work presents a clear inefficiency ripe for disruption. The timing is opportune with the maturation of AI capabilities and increasing demand for efficiency in financial services. Regulatory tailwinds are generally supportive of fintech innovation, though specific regulations around financial modeling and AI use will need monitoring. Competition exists but the 'Cursor for financial modeling' analogy suggests a potentially disruptive approach. [Boost +1.5: Hot sector: fintech; Large TAM mentioned]
Product shows promise with the 'AI underwriting layer for Excel' concept. The technical differentiation lies in building a trustworthy Excel agent, addressing a critical pain point. Defensibility could come from proprietary AI models, data integration capabilities, and network effects as more users adopt. UX quality will be paramount for adoption by finance professionals accustomed to Excel. Platform potential is high if it can expand beyond initial use cases to become a central hub for financial analysis.
Early stage with limited public traction data. The recent Y Combinator launch and positive press coverage are good initial signals. However, concrete metrics on revenue, user growth, or significant partnerships are not yet available. Investor interest is implied by YC acceptance, but further validation is needed.
News
Alt-X automates the manual process of real estate underwriting by turning offering memorandums into financial models in Excel, with every number traceable to the source document and requiring user approval for changes.
AltX, founded in 2022 in London, develops an Excel editor for finance power users that constructs financial models from natural language and automates formatting and error checking.
Alt-x.co received an AEO Site Rank of 22/100, indicating weak AI visibility with critical gaps in areas like the llms.txt file and Schema.org structured data.
Alt-X, a Y Combinator startup, has launched an AI Excel agent designed to transform 200-page offering memorandums into fully built, auditable institutional underwriting models in seconds.
Alt-X is an active Y Combinator company founded in 2025, developing an AI layer for Excel to automate the extraction of data and generation of institutional-grade underwriting models for private market investments.
AltX raised a total of $500K in a Seed round on September 29, 2025, from Y Combinator.
Alt-X, an Excel plugin developed by former Citadel analysts, automates real estate underwriting by generating institutional-grade models from PDFs locally and securely, requiring human approval for all changes.
Alt-X is developing an Excel agent that automates the creation of institutional-grade financial models from deal documents, aiming to streamline private market investing.
Quick Info
- Batch
- Winter 2026
- Team Size
- 2
- Location
- Unspecified
- Founders
- 2
- Scraped
- 4/10/2026