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Client story · Fractional CSO + CFO

Arabesque: AI asset management born out of Barclays.

Two positions in one. Strategy and finance, held by the same operator.

Arabesque executive at the company’s offices

What the position owned

Not advice. Ownership.

Fundraising and growth

Strategised the raise and the growth plan as Chief Strategy Officer, then made the numbers behind it stand up as CFO.

Sales execution

Did not just advise on revenue. Executed sales and managed the CRM personally.

The financial landscape

Oversaw the whole financial picture of the business, from pipeline to reported results.

The company

What Arabesque actually does.

Arabesque was born in 2013, when its management bought the business out of Barclays to chase one idea: investment management run by AI. It launched its first funds in 2014, spun up a dedicated AI research division in 2019, and incubated ESG Book, a sustainability data platform now covering tens of thousands of companies, in 2018.

The flagship today is AutoCIO, an AI platform that builds, optimises and manages equity portfolios, producing daily forecasts across more than 50,000 equities. It launched in 2021 as a way for investment teams to generate customised strategies at scale, runs on Google Cloud, and in 2026 became available inside Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Gallery. ESG Book, meanwhile, raised a £29 million Series B in 2022 led by Energy Impact Partners with Meridiam and Allianz X.

The market

Portfolio managers, wealth advisors and institutional investment teams, buyers who want AI-driven and sustainability-aware strategies without building the machinery themselves. The group’s named partners and users include Google Cloud, DWS, eToro and HSBC.

The business, on one page

The canvas.

Customers

Asset managers, wealth advisors and institutional investment teams; ESG Book serves financial organisations needing sustainability data.

Value proposition

AI that does the portfolio construction: daily forecasts across 50,000+ equities, turned into customised, compliant strategies on demand.

Channels & partners

Direct institutional sales plus distribution through Google Cloud’s marketplace and Gemini Enterprise; Google Cloud as the core technology partner.

Revenue

Platform access for investment firms, regulated fund management, and data subscriptions through ESG Book.

Key resources

The AI forecasting engine, a multi-year live track record on regulated capital, and the ESG data estate.

Cost structure

Research and engineering-heavy: AI talent, market data, cloud compute and the compliance load of regulated asset management.

The position’s default plays

What a great CSO + CFO does in a company like this.

01Turns the science into a commercial strategy. A group this technical can drown in its own research. The strategy position’s first job is choosing which capabilities become products, for which buyer, at what price, and saying no to the rest.
02Runs sales as a system, not a rolodex. Institutional buyers move slowly and diligence deeply. Owning the CRM, the pipeline stages and the follow-up discipline is what turns reputation into revenue.
03Frames the raise around the track record. Live performance on regulated capital is the asset investors actually price. The CFO packages it, audited, attributed, comparable, so every fundraising conversation starts from evidence.
04Prices the data estate separately. ESG Book showed the model: data incubated inside the group became its own funded company. A great operator keeps asking which internal asset deserves its own cap table next.
05Owns the whole financial landscape. Funds, platform, data company, group: four sets of economics, one picture for the board. The position keeps them consolidated, current and honest.

Coverage

Strategy decks are cheap. A strategist who also owns the P&L is not.

Let’s get on a call

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**Georgina King***Executive Partnership Manager*

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The position behind it

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