The Stealth-Mode Startup Building an Army of Agents for Family Offices

Throughout most of 2024, Joseph Michalak worked with a family office in Beverly Hills, California, on a new digital marketplace for ultra-high-end, pre-owned collectibles. Their goal was to determine if artificial intelligence could serve as a sort of auctioneer, helping buyers and sellers secure better prices for the most expensive watches, cars, baseball cards and other objets d'art.

It was a complex technical task, even for Michalak, who had led teams of developers and projects at Microsoft, Cisco, Intuit, and other organizations. He ultimately wasn’t confident the company could differentiate itself enough from competitors, so he started considering his next move.

He already had a kernel of an idea.

While researching collectible marketplaces and participants, Michalak did a roadshow to family offices and conferences they attended. He learned about each clan, their collections, how their rarities fit into their portfolios and all about their disparate processes and software.

“How do they manage these different things, from the tax and estate, to the wealth and the investments? How do you glue this together?” Michalak recalled asking himself. “What I discovered was that they didn't have any systems that glued together.”

Early this year, Michalak founded Nivalto to create that connectivity between systems at family offices and wealth management firms. The startup is building what it describes as an AI operating system.

“We are not adding AI onto legacy wealthtech. We are creating a next-gen agentic ecosystem designed from scratch to manage the full lifecycle of ultra-high net worth family operations,” Michalak told Modus.

The bootstrapped, stealth-mode company already has more than 10 employees, who have worked in family offices and on wealth management software, AI systems, and fiduciary operations. They are currently working on a proof of concept called Aura, a growing system of 50 AI agents that can not only analyze documents and data, they will automatically complete tasks across wealth, estate, tax, healthcare, lifestyle, and investment workflows of a family office, according to Michalak.

Information from Aura agents gets synthesized into dashboards specifically for family members (who can each be granted visibility and the ability to change specific accounts and information), their in-house advisors and, if they want, for other professionals they work with, such as an accountant or lawyer. Michalak says Nivalto goes well beyond aggregating information in certain places. Sharing information will be more efficient and adaptive, but the real value lies in when agents complete tasks on behalf of users. The startup estimates that its Aura agents can reduce the time advisors spend manually coordinating information by 80%.

All of the actions taken by AI are recorded and require explicit approval based on each person’s role, so that nothing unwanted happens. Families and advisors will always see what decisions were made, by whom, and why.

“I've shown [users] basically a snapshot of what I have, and they're very impressed,” Michalak said. “It can automate this industry, and I think it's going to.”

Nivalto is not the first company to build agents for family offices. Years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a one-off agent project at Armanino, an accounting and consulting firm that counts more than 60 billionaires among its clients. Since then, Armanino has developed a whole suite of bots and artificial intelligence services that have impressed even some tech-savvy family offices, including Ballmer Group, Steve and Connie Ballmer’s family office, which manages their personal wealth, philanthropy, and businesses.

Last year, David Chie, a longtime recruiter in Silicon Valley, founded Maple Drive, an “AI-first” executive search firm for family offices and private equity firms. But “Lucy” will never replace Chie or his colleagues. Clients should feel like they're dealing with a superhuman, not a robot, he said.

Other companies are also using or developing AI agents and tools specifically for family offices, as well as the professionals who work with them.

Concerns about privacy, control and customization have caused many family offices to adopt new technology more slowly than commercial organizations. However, that might not be the case going forward.

“I think single-family offices and wealth managers will be both cautious and selective in how they adopt AI, but ultimately, they’ll get there faster than many people expect,” Michalak said. “The offices are acutely aware of the rising complexity they’re managing. Global portfolios, multi-generational governance, regulatory pressures, private market allocations, and healthcare integration. And this is pushing these families and their advisors to look for smarter, more adaptive solutions.”

Nivalto expects to begin working with pilot customers within the next six to 12 months to capitalize on the possible shift. The company is not actively raising capital, but Michalak expects it will in the future. He's actively taking calls from family offices interested in piloting Aura's army of agents.

“We are standing at a pivotal moment because, for the first time, family offices are seriously examining where AI fits into the future of wealth management, governance, and legacy,” Michalak said. “They are considering it not just as an automation tool, but as a true partner in decision-making and execution.”

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