Caruso takes AI fund administration software into US after $11.2m capital raise

The start-up, which had already expanded to Sydney, put boots on the ground in the US last month.

“We launched in North America in October, with team members based in Dallas and New York. I have moved to Dallas to lead this growth. We are seeing strong signals we can have a similar impact in the US as we did in Australia,” Hurley says.

In February, Caruso signed ASX-listed Centuria Capital Group, which has more than $20 billion of assets under management across Australia and New Zealand, including more than 400 properties.

Centuria decided to move to Caruso after an extensive due diligence and procurement process. The partnership is also the starting point for Caruso’s expansion beyond unlisted private market funds into listed funds and companies — beginning with Centuria’s ASX-listed vehicles — as the platform’s AI-native approach proves applicable across a broader range of Australian fund structures.

“Everything we do at Centuria is in service of our investors, and that extends to the infrastructure behind our fund operations,” Centuria Capital Group CEO Jason Huljich says.

“Caruso gives our investors more transparency and a better experience, while freeing our team to focus on what we do best.

“AI-native fund administration is going to become the standard globally for companies that do what we do, and Caruso is leading the way.”

Charter Hall Direct – part of ASX-listed Charter Hall Group, one of Australia’s largest property investment and fund management groups – also joined its roster.

Caruso now has more than 100 customers.

Contracted recurring revenue is around $13m, up about 3.6x on a year ago, Hurley says.

“We’re targeting more than $30m by the end of next year.” he adds,” he adds.

His firm’s software is used to administer more than $130 billion in assets across more than 100 customers in New Zealand, Australia and the US.

Existing customers have also been using more of its services, which include AI agents to supplement human staff.

“Net revenue retention is 113.7%, and increasing month on month as clients use us for more funds and more services,” Hurley says.

“Headcount is approximately 70 and growing rapidly.”

All product and engineering is still done in New Zealand.

“The AI built into our product makes our local teams in each region faster and more accurate, which flips the usual economics,” Hurley says.

“Most of our competitors send this work to the Philippines and similar; we don’t need to. We’re bullish on NZ engineering talent and are growing the team.”

Hurley has also been a director and investor in one of New Zealand’s most successful fintechs, the Auckland-based FirstAML, and an investor in a slate of Kiwi start-ups that enjoyed big exits or rapid growth, including Joyous, Sharesies, Tracksuit and Marloo.

But it was at Jasper, the real estate private equity firm he founded with software developer Shaw and Mark Campbell in 2019, that Caruso started to take shape.

“We started to build this internal piece of technology to solve our own problems. We had no intention of creating a business. But we suddenly realised that we were solving a problem for ourselves that actually existed across the industry.

“We weren’t really putting a lot of resource into it initially. But over 2022 and 2023, we just had so many fund managers reaching out to us and say, ‘Hey, the [Jasper] onboarding experience was great. How did you build that? Can we license that software?’ We launched our first client in August 2023 and we’ve been growing rapidly ever since.”

That came just months after ChatGPT pushed large language models into the mainstream.

“We were very fortunate with the timing of AI for our business,” Hurley says.

“We were young enough to have this modern infrastructure that we can plug AI into easily, but mature enough to have scale and data and users.

“Whereas legacy platforms are trying to bolt on AI, we were lucky enough to be in the sweet spot where we were able to become an AI-native company.

Hurley adds, “If you distil it, what we’re building is the world’s smartest agentic layer for fund administration.

“The big AI models provide the raw intelligence; we provide everything that turns it into a fund administrator. We’ve built a data ontology structured for how funds actually work, plus deep context on each client’s funds, business rules, and processes, and we can plug in any major AI model depending on the task. Our clients already use it to run material parts of their fund operations.”

Caruso also uses AI inhouse. Via Anthropic’s Claude, it developed its platform via its own agent, Luca, which staff can address with plain English queries through Slack.

“Our internal agent Luca, is industry-leading and available to every employee. It answers questions, plans work, writes documents, and builds new software features on its own, with our engineers only reviewing its final output.

“Improvements that used to take weeks now often go live within hours of a customer asking. We’re releasing new features faster than competitors with engineering teams ten times our size.”

“We’ve been big believers in Mark and Ollie’s vision from inception, and we’re excited to be doubling down on Caruso as they replace legacy solutions with true AI-native software,” GD1 partner Vignesh Kumar says.

“The fund administration industry’s global impact is immense. It touches almost every aspect of people’s lives, from infrastructure like roads and housing to retirement savings,” Icehouse partner Jack McQuire says.

“Despite this, the industry still runs on decades-old software.

“Caruso’s rapid growth to date is just the beginning of what their AI-native platform can unlock for this industry.”

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.

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