Dr. Masoud Nafey, Founder, Ment AI

Today we're meeting Masoud, Founder at Ment AI. They specialise in relationship intelligence platforms that empower users with up-to-date, relevant, personal, and contextual insights on people they meet, enabling them to create deeper bonds.

I think this is especially relevant in the context of today's financial services environment where there's a constant concern over how to deliver 'traditional' relationship management experiences in an digital and AI world.

Right then: Over to you Masoud - my questions are in bold:

Who are you and what's your background?

I'm Masoud, a three-time AI founder and longtime consultant in emerging technology. My background is unique because I've spent my career at the intersection of healthcare, AI, and human behaviour.

I helped build the Vision Performance Centre at Stanford's Human-Centred AI Institute, I sit on several tech company boards, and I have advised global organisations like Alcon on AI strategy and digital health. Academically, I come from a science and health background: I studied Exercise Biology and Physiology at UC Davis, earned a Doctor of Optometry from The Ohio State University, and later completed an Executive MBA at UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management.

Across everything I've done, there's been a consistent thread: relationships are at the core of everything. That's what led us to create Ment. I wanted to build an AI company that enhances relationships, not replaces them. And, I wanted to create intelligence that gives global leaders the context, clarity, and confidence they need to build trust faster in both personal and professional settings.

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

As Founder, my role is to set our vision, guide our product strategy, and ensure the team is aligned and executes our goal to make relationship intelligence more human and more personal. I spend time balancing short and long-term strategy with hands-on collaboration across our functions. I work closely with engineering, design, and product to shape how our AI understands people and delivers context that supports stronger personal relationships. I also lead our external efforts, including partnerships, customer conversations, and fundraising, to make sure we are solving real problems for our partners.

Can you give us an overview of your business?

Ment is an AI company purpose-built for stronger relationship management. In a world overflowing with information and digital noise, busy professionals struggle to maintain the human details that make relationships meaningful.

Ment solves this by delivering the right personal context, at the right moment, helping leaders show up prepared, build trust faster, and strengthen their most important relationships. Ment is able to transform scattered fragments of public and private signals into clear and actionable insight. Through Ment, we enrich every contact with contextual intelligence like behavioural traits, shared interests, key life moments and milestones, sensitivities, and affiliations.

Having access to this depth of understanding allows users to deepen bonds across their relationships. Ment is entirely privacy-first, built on secure, controlled data enrichment designed to serve organisations and high-impact leaders who rely on strong relationships to succeed. Whether accessed through the Ment platform and app or integrated directly into existing systems via API, Ment adds a layer of intelligence to provide contextual insights that traditional tools weren't built to provide.

Tell us how you are funded?

Ment has been privately funded to date through a group of angel investors, close supporters, and early believers in our vision. This early backing allowed us to build the foundation of our technology, validate our category, find our product-market fit, and bring our first set of users onto the platform. Considering all the various use cases of our technology, we have been deliberately focused on serving global leaders, executives, and principals. We are now entering our next stage of growth and are seeking a bridge round to accelerate product development and expand our go-to-market efforts ahead of a Series A.

What's the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?

People do business with people they like, but staying connected in a meaningful way has never been increasingly difficult. Whether it was through my own personal experience, advising companies, working with global leaders, or relationship-driven teams—the pattern was always the same. We all manage hundreds of relationships across emails, texts, social platforms, meetings, and introductions. The result is overload and missed moments that matter. We wanted to build something that made relationship-building more human. That idea became Ment AI. At its core, Ment exists because we believe relationships drive what's possible in work and in life. We work every day to support that truth with intelligent tools that make connecting easier, more intentional, and more human.

Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?

Our customers are organisations whose success depends on trust, timing, and having the right context before they walk into a meeting. That can include a wide range of industries from government to investments to nonprofits. Even large corporate teams who rely on relationships for sales, recruiting, employee engagement, or team building. Across industries, the people we support usually fall into similar roles — people who are constantly meeting new people and managing wide, complex networks. What they all share is a need to understand more than a job title or LinkedIn profile. They need to know the personal side of individuals and what someone values, what motivates them, and how to quickly build trust. Those teams already do tremendous research on the people they interact with, but it's time-consuming and often incomplete. Ment helps them shortcut that process and provides deeper context up front so they can prepare smarter, personalise outreach, and strengthen the relationships that move their business forward.

What role do you see AI playing in strengthening human connection in finance?

In a world where technology has made things more impersonal, we found a way to use AI to make things more personal. The premise for how AI can strengthen the human connection is the same. AI can help us learn, stay connected, and adapt to our respective and unique needs. AI can help people focus on the human aspects of work by taking care of the surrounding noise. Rather than replacing relationships, it lightens the cognitive load by handling tasks like note-taking, research, and information recall so professionals can be fully present. The real value emerges when AI provides the right context at the right moment: helping you remember what someone cares about, surfacing relevant insights before a meeting, or prompting a thoughtful follow-up. That's the kind of AI that strengthens human connection instead of distracting from it.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?

I'd love to shift the mindset of how we do business from "transaction-based" to "value-based."

What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?

Every customer, big and small, has unique needs and not all offerings today provide the same level of value to each of your clients. Dig deeper and become obsessed with your customer so then you can excel with the product-market fit of your offerings.

Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?

Financial Times, WSJ, and the FinTech section of TechCrunch.

What's the best new FinTech product or service you've seen recently?

I love what seQura is doing in the FinTech space.

They are shifting their offering from the traditional BNPL (buy now pay later) model to value-based subscription or membership models that solve for unique friction points in each industry they serve.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?

Convenience always wins.

With the help of AI, we will see more personalised FinTech offerings and experiences that solve for problems customers face today.

Thank you Masoud. Connect with Masoud on LinkedIn and read more about Ment AI at their website.