Fintech Brokerage Ainvest Switches to Nasdaq Basic via API, Contributing to 500% Increase in New Customers in 30 Days

Ainvest, an early-stage, next-generation broker dealer that provides brokerage services and alternative data to its users, needed comprehensive real-time data for its trading app. Ainvest chose Nasdaq Basic, delivered via streaming API running on AWS, to fuel its market data investing app and website. Nasdaq’s solution not only netted Ainvest an increase in new users due to the improved quality of data insights, but also inspired it to move all its operations to the Amazon Web Services (AWS). This helped Ainvest deliver on its mission to empower its users with financial intelligence through a solution that was efficient, scalable, secure, and competitively priced.

As a young firm, Ainvest’s key focus was on growing its app usage, and retaining users. With its core emphasis on deriving actionable investment insights from market and alternative data through artificial intelligence (AI) technology, it was looking to sharpen its competitive edge with high-quality data. These insights could then be represented in a variety of charting tools, so that customers could have a comprehensive and in-depth view of the market at their fingertips. With its original market data provider, Ainvest was missing out on pre- and post-market data, bid-ask data, and other crucial data points. This created significant gaps in charting and other Ainvest data offerings. Additionally, data was previously scattered across multiple servers overseas, making it difficult to monitor from a technology perspective.

Adam Wang, CEO at Ainvest, summed up its mantra: “Our goal is to be your investment assistant using our AI technology.” To that end, Ainvest decided on Nasdaq Basic via API delivery running on AWS. Unlike other providers, Nasdaq was in a unique position to provide critical data points that differentiated it from other players in the market. Nasdaq captures the flood of orders and trades at the opening and closing of the market—as well as points of high market volatility—faster than any other provider.

Ainvest leverages this data to offer two AI-supported functions for its end users. AI Screener, which is an AI-based stock scanner, surveys the market for specialized signals that trigger trading opportunities. “We need high quality data to feed the AI and produce valued results,” said Wang. Michael Ferraro, VP Operations at Ainvest, added, “With Nasdaq’s quote and cloud solution, we can provide scalable, timely and accurate signals that benefit our users.” Additionally, Ainvest’s Stock Price Trend Forecast uses Nasdaq data to compare and predict stock price action. “With Nasdaq Basic’s consolidated quote, we have more dense data points to support our AI,” said Ferraro.

“By switching to Nasdaq Basic on AWS, we improved our app with higher-quality, clean, comprehensive market data. This directly benefited our end customers and netted a five-fold increase in new users in the month after implementing Nasdaq data,” Ferraro said. In addition to a smooth transition to Nasdaq data on AWS, Ainvest has also seen increased customer retention—at a high of 34 percent after launching with Nasdaq Basic. Ferraro also spoke to the significant savings that accrued from the switch: “Our CapEx and OpEx savings exceed $10,000 and $1,100 a month respectively now that we’re cutting down on hardware and monthly infrastructure maintenance costs.”

Around the same time that Ainvest improved the quality and cost of delivering its app with Nasdaq Basic data, it also migrated some of its scattered overseas servers to AWS. Migrating its databases to AWS; using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for storage; leveraging the compute power of Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute, (Amazon EC2) and working with AWS virtual machines translated into several advantages. “Moving our data to the US helped with reducing latency, improving efficiency, and allowing for global collaboration. Also, a lot of our technology team members are not based in the US. Hosting our app on AWS gives them the ability to work on it flexibly,” according to Ainvest’s Tech Lead, Richard Li.

By choosing to migrate to AWS and deploying Nasdaq data on the cloud, Ainvest has maintained a high standard of security for its customers. Security and compliance are job zero and a shared responsibility between AWS and Ainvest.

This shared responsibility model helped relieve some of Ainvest’s operational burden as it was able to rely on AWS to operate, manage and control the components from the host operating system and virtualization layer down to the physical security of the facilities in which the service operates, allowing Ainvest to shift its focus away from physical operations, and toward scaling and innovating its business.

Both Ainvest and its customers benefit from using AWS data centers and a network architected to protect their information, identities, applications, and devices. Li emphasized the importance of picking the commercially available cloud that has been vetted as secure enough for mission-critical workloads: “Being able to leverage security best practices and expertise from AWS and Nasdaq is something we value deeply as a small firm. We gain the control and confidence needed to securely run our business with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today.” Mix in the ease of scalability and affordability inherent on the cloud, and Ainvest has set a clear path for growth.