- Excel-native AI plug-in enables complex, accurate modelling at unprecedented speed, helping financial analysts make better judgment calls faster
- Early users in investment banking and professional services report 90% time savings on laborious and repetitive modelling tasks
- Seed round led by Chalfen Ventures will fund Tracelight’s product, team, and go-to-market expansion.
LONDON and NEW YORK, Aug. 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Tracelight, the UK-founded AI company making financial models easier to build and trust, has raised $3.6 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Chalfen Ventures, with participation from Acequia Capital, Inovo and EF, and angels including Charlie Songhurst (ex Microsoft head of Corporate Strategy) and Suhit Gupta (ex-CIO General Atlantic and Carlyle).
Complex financial models are the hidden architecture of global finance, shaping mergers, investments, and strategic decisions worth trillions. Yet it is a world largely untouched by the AI revolution. The tools underpinning financial modelling have barely evolved in decades – with Microsoft Excel, the spreadsheet platform still at the heart of most modelling, celebrating its 40th anniversary this September.
Tracelight bridges the gap between financial models and large language models (LLMs) by turning spreadsheet logic into LLM-friendly data, allowing financial analysts and consultants to harness the benefits of Generative AI when building complex financial models.
By integrating directly into the spreadsheet workflow and enhancing how LLMs interpret and work with Excel, Tracelight eliminates repetitive modelling tasks. From writing complex formulas and validating models to autonomously running analysis from simple natural language prompts, it is a force multiplier for analysts, augmenting their skills with AI, letting them model faster and smarter without needing to change the way they work.
Since launch, Tracelight has gained early traction among analysts at investment banks, private credit investment and private equity houses and leading professional services firms. Early users are already reporting >90% time savings on laborious modelling tasks like building common analyses, formatting, and finding errors.
Crucially, Tracelight keeps humans in control of decision-making. Rather than replacing analysts, it enables them to build better financial models and focus on high-stakes decisions where human judgment is essential.
Tracelight was founded in 2024 by Peter Fuller, a former McKinsey consultant and Entrepreneur First team lead, alongside Aleksander Misztal (ex-Jane Street engineer) and Janek Zimoch (founding engineer at 11x).
Peter Fuller, co-founder and CEO of Tracelight, said: “Complex financial models underpin all of the corporate world’s most important decisions. Until now, LLMs have barely touched this workflow. Tracelight is purpose-built for this; it works seamlessly inside the tools analysts already trust. Our aim is to take away the entire mechanical workload of financial modelling. Our users act as directors and orchestrators of AI that is quickly becoming superhuman at the task of Excel analysis.’
That vision is supported by a deep technical foundation. Aleksander Misztal, co-founder and CTO of Tracelight, added: “The financial models used by investors, consultants, bankers and corporate finance professionals are large, logically complex, and formatted according to strict rules. Our technology unlocks the full reasoning power of frontier LLMs on these files; for the first time, Excel financial modellers will be able to tap into the power of frontier AI models directly in their existing workflow.’
Mike Chalfen, Solo VC at Chalfen Ventures, said: “The most magical AI tools work at the highest level of abstraction, making them radically easy to adopt, while understanding and executing complex work under the hood. Tracelight does that. It has taken the world’s most widely used modelling platform and embedded AI where it can have immediate impact. And its rapid adoption by analysts in demanding modelling environments shows just how big the opportunity is.”
Hank Vigil, Founder at Acequia Capital, said: “Excel—now 40 years old—still holds the bulk of the world’s business logic. What excites me about Tracelight is how naturally it brings advanced AI into the financial modelling workflows professionals already know and trust. It’s the first solution that extends the power of Excel modelling without requiring professionals to abandon the tools they know best.”
Available today as an Excel add-in via the Microsoft Add-In Store, Tracelight is initially aimed at individual analysts, consultants, and finance professionals.
The new funding will enable Tracelight to build out the product, team and distribution to serve the world’s finance and strategy professionals.
About Tracelight
Tracelight aims to make analysts superhuman in spreadsheets. It is the AI engine for complex financial modelling in Excel, purpose-built to fit precisely into professional analyst workflows. Tracelight is available online at tracelight.ai today, and on Microsoft AppSource.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/tracelightai
X: @tracelightai
Instagram: @tracelightai
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SOURCE Tracelight