Vanguard announced Wednesday it has agreed to acquire Altruist, the AI-forward wealth technology and custody platform founded by Jason Wenk that serves independent financial advisors, for approximately $4 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The deal is expected to close later this year pending regulatory approval. Altruist will operate as a standalone business under Vanguard's ownership, keeping its leadership, brand and distinct operating model.
Altruist combines a self-clearing brokerage with integrated software for account opening, trading, portfolio management, billing and reporting, and uses AI throughout to make those processes cheaper and faster than competing advisor platforms.
It competes directly with Charles Schwab and Fidelity in providing custodial and back-office services to independent registered investment advisors.
That is a large and growing market: the RIA channel now manages roughly $10 trillion in assets, and independent advisors have been taking market share from wirehouse brokerages for more than a decade.
For Vanguard, this is a significant strategic bet. The world's second-largest asset manager has been almost entirely built on low-fee index funds sold directly to individual investors. It tried to enter the advisor custody business in the mid-2000s, failed and pulled back.
CEO Salim Ramji, who came from BlackRock in 2024, has made diversifying Vanguard's revenue streams a stated priority. Altruist is the most visible piece of that effort. "Altruist's mission to make financial advice more accessible and more affordable," Ramji said, "very much rhymes with what we're trying to do at Vanguard."
Vanguard first invested in Altruist in 2020. It is buying the rest.