Tracelight, a UK-based AI startup, has launched an innovative AI engine designed to revolutionize financial modeling within Microsoft Excel. Backed by a $3.6 million seed funding round led by Chalfen Ventures, the company aims to streamline complex financial workflows, enabling analysts to make faster, smarter decisions.
Tracelight’s AI engine integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Excel, a 40-year-old platform still central to global financial modeling. By transforming spreadsheet logic into data compatible with large language models (LLMs), the solution automates repetitive tasks like formula creation, model validation, and analysis from natural language prompts. “Complex financial models underpin all of the corporate world’s most important decisions,” said Peter Fuller, co-founder and CEO of Tracelight. “Until now, LLMs have barely touched this workflow. Tracelight is purpose-built for this; it works seamlessly inside the tools analysts already trust.”
Since its launch in 2024, Tracelight has gained traction among investment banks, private equity firms, and professional services organizations. Early users report over 90% time savings on tasks such as building analyses, formatting, and error detection. “The financial models used by investors, consultants, bankers, and corporate finance professionals are large, logically complex, and formatted according to strict rules,” said Aleksander Misztal, co-founder and CTO of Tracelight. “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.”
Unlike fully automated systems, Tracelight emphasizes human oversight, ensuring analysts remain in control of critical decision-making. The platform acts as a force multiplier, enhancing productivity without replacing the essential role of human judgment in high-stakes financial decisions. This approach aligns with the needs of finance professionals who rely on Excel for strategic decisions in mergers, investments, and corporate planning.
The $3.6 million seed round, supported by Chalfen Ventures, Acequia Capital, Inovo, EF, and notable angel investors like Charlie Songhurst and Suhit Gupta, will fuel Tracelight’s product development and global expansion. “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,” said Mike Chalfen, Solo VC at Chalfen Ventures. Hank Vigil, Founder at Acequia Capital, added, “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.”
Available as an Excel add-in via the Microsoft Add-In Store, Tracelight is poised to transform financial modeling for analysts worldwide. With its recent funding, the company is set to expand its reach, delivering smarter, faster, and more reliable tools to the finance and strategy sectors, heralding a new era of AI-enhanced productivity.
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.
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