AI trading startup on the rise thanks to direction from Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center

The 2020 stock market ended on high note, despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and brought in millions of new retail traders, causing the trading volume to go through the roof.

Companies like Robinhood and other zero-commission brokerages made it easy to start trading, but ultimately led to many uninformed trades, explained Arnav Pangasa (BS Computer Science, BS Math ’23) Chief Technology Officer of Infinite Sweeps.

“And with huge investment agencies spending billions on data and computational power, it’s really tough for these common traders to stack up,” he said.

Pangasa, along with Sohil Kollipara (BS Chemistry ’23) and John Michaelis (BS Electrical Engineering ’23), are hoping to change the trading game to favor individual investors through their startup Infinite Sweeps.

After 2020, the entrepreneurs saw a need for accessibility to quality financial data and a premium algorithm that individual traders could utilize to improve their portfolio.

“The odds are against the common investor,” Pangasa said. “With our platform, ordinary traders can get complex machine learning powered analytics in a clean, concise and intuitive format.”

Pangasa, Kollipara and Michaelis’ idea is starting to catch on, thanks in part to the Warrington College of Business’ Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center.

After winning the Best Technology Venture Award in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center’s Big Idea Competition, which served as a launchpad for the business, Infinite Sweeps has been able to roll out its beta platform and begin streaming data to roughly 200 users. The team also has plans to migrate their AI research to the UF HiPerGator, the fastest supercomputer in higher education, and has started researching the application of AI in analyzing other financial data streams, like news, social media and chart patterns.

“Before participating in the UF Big Idea Competition and developing our full-fledged business plan, we were missing integral understandings of major aspects of our company,” Pangasa said. “Coming from STEM backgrounds, our focus was overwhelmingly on the technology and how to achieve maximal operations with the most efficient architecture. The Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center helped us build the realization of how crucial market analysis, industry analysis, marketing strategies, and financial projections really are in order to construct a successful business.”

Pangasa recalled the struggles he, Kollipara and Michaelis had in getting lost in the minutia and forgetting the bigger picture of what they were trying to accomplish with Infinite Sweeps.

“Dr. [Alex] Settles gave us invaluable advice that pulled us from that pit and made sure we were still looking at the full vision,” he recalled.

Learning to focus in on their business goals propelled the team to state-wide recognition. In April 2020, Infinite Sweeps won the Governor’s Cup, Florida’s premier collegiate pitch competition, which earned them a trophy and a cash prize.

“One of the biggest things we had going for us headed into the Governor’s Cup was the thoroughness of our business plan, which we prepared during the UF Big Idea Competition,” Pangasa said. “Not only did it emphasize the solidity of our business model, but it also ensured that we ourselves were well-versed in all aspects of our company — from the industry to the economics to the marketing to the technology and the how and why behind each decision we made.”

With two awards under their belt, the Infinite Sweeps team is excited about what the future of their business holds. 

“Our focus is the power of AI and how computing can change the lives of ordinary people,” Pangasa said. “There is still so much potential for our AI algorithms to grow and unveil new possibilities. The future for Infinite Sweeps is rich with possible expansions of the use cases of our AI and our AI itself throughout the financial data realm, and we have already started down that path between boosting our computing power and branching out into other investment research applications.”