Company:Zest AI
 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2009 |
| Founder | Douglas Merrill |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California |
Key people | Mike de Vere, Chief Executive Officer |
| Products | Credit underwriting software |
| Website | zest.ai |
Zest AI is a private financial software company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It develops and markets machine learning software used by underwriters to assess borrower risk.[1] Its software produces one of the more commonly digitized credit scores.[2]
History
Zest AI was founded by Douglas Merrill[3][4] in 2009 under the name ZestFinance.[1] The company started out as a direct-to-consumer subprime lender, before transitioning to selling its software to other lenders.[4][5] It changed its name from ZestFinance to Zest AI in October 2019[1] after founder Merrill left the company and Mike de Vere took his place as CEO.[6] By October 2020, it had raised $87 million in venture capital funding.[7]
Software
The company's software uses machine learning and thousands of data-points to score a borrower's risk.[2][8] It employs a technique called “adversarial de-biasing” where one AI creates an analytical model, and another criticizes that model for biases. The first AI then adjusts its models based on the biases identified by the criticizing AI.[9]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Saha, S.N. (2020) (in mt). The Digital Choices. Evincepub Publishing. p. 45. ISBN 978-93-89774-60-3.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lippert, John (October 11, 2014). "ZestFinance issues small, high-rate loans, uses big data to weed out deadbeats". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/zestfinance-issues-small-high-rate-loans-uses-big-data-to-weed-out-deadbeats/2014/10/10/e34986b6-4d71-11e4-aa5e-7153e466a02d_story.html. Retrieved April 16, 2021.
- ↑ Jenkins, Patrick (June 23, 2014). "Big data lends new Zest to banks’ credit judgments". https://www.ft.com/content/dfe64c0c-fadd-11e3-8959-00144feab7de.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Kim, Eugene (July 18, 2015). "Google's former CIO was deaf and dyslexic as a kid - now he’s helping millions of Americans get emergency loans". https://www.businessinsider.com/zest-finance-douglas-merrill-2015-7.
- ↑ Clark, Liat (August 15, 2013). "ZestFinance CEO: 'We need data artists to save zombie borrowers'". https://www.wired.co.uk/article/zestfinance-douglas-merrill.
- ↑ Kahn, Jeremy (October 20, 2020). "Zest AI, which uses A.I. to make lending more inclusive, gets new funding". https://fortune.com/2020/10/20/artificial-intelligence-unfair-lending/.
- ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (October 20, 2020). "Zest raises $15 million to reduce loan algorithm bias". https://venturebeat.com/2020/10/20/zest-raises-15-million-to-reduce-loan-algorithm-bias/.
- ↑ Allen, Karma (June 10, 2014). "Silicon Valley's rich want to bank America's poor". https://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/10/silicon-valleys-rich-want-to-bank-americas-poor.html.
- ↑ Totty, Michael (November 3, 2020). "How to Make Artificial Intelligence Less Biased". https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-make-artificial-intelligence-less-biased-11604415654.
External links
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