#StartupsEverywhere: Mike Conover, Founder and CEO, Brightwave
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Transforming Investment Insights Through AI Innovation
With a deep understanding of the statistical realities shaping our world, Mike Conover recognized the limitations of human cognition in active asset management. As the co-founder and CEO of Brightwave—an AI research assistant for finance professionals designed to enhance investment decision-making—he is committed to harnessing the power of language models to process vast quantities of information and identify mispriced assets. We sat down with Mike to discuss AI for startups, state policy, and more.
Tell us about your background. What led you to Brightwave?
I've been building AI and machine learning technologies for over fifteen years, with experience across startups and large enterprises. I have a PhD in complexity science, a statistical discipline where my research focused on the large-scale network structure of misinformation campaigns on Twitter. I spent time at LinkedIn where I built systems for homepage newsfeed relevance, and during my time there published research in Nature Communications on how 500 million job transitions could predict changes in the S&P 500. These experiences and others gave me an unusual front-row seat to systems, like the economy and social media, that shape the modern world.
Markets are the ultimate manifestation of how humans allocate and account for value, though they often defy intuitive understanding. Language models present an opportunity to change our ability to perceive and process these vast quantities of information. At Brightwave, we are building a tool that expands an individual's ability to connect the dots across bodies of content relevant to the investment space.
What is Brightwave?
Brightwave is an AI research assistant purpose-built for investment management. The job of an active asset manager is to uncover insights about the world that others haven’t yet seen in order to identify mispriced assets. That's a tough challenge, and it's not clear that it is a task well suited to human intellect or attention span. From a working memory standpoint, large language model (LLM) technologies outstrip what a person is able to keep in mind simultaneously and exceed the limits of human cognition given the body of material facts that are relevant to an investment decision.
Colorado passed the first sweeping state AI law in 2024. How do you view states acting to regulate AI?
First of all, I want to commend the Governor of Colorado for his openness in engaging with the business community to refine AI legislation. As we look to 2025, it’s clear that governments at both the state and federal level will need to partner with subject matter experts to create a regulatory environment that supports innovation, entrepreneurship, and a forward-looking national security posture. The tools we’ve used to govern the technologies of the past 30 years aren’t appropriate for artificial intelligence systems, and anchoring legislation in rational, technically-informed views is going to be crucial to American success in the 21st century.
What support across the AI ecosystem would you like to see from policymakers?
Investing in semiconductor manufacturing is critical and we need to build domestic capacity. From a perspective of sharing the wealth and success, the halo effects of domestic chip manufacturing includes job creation and increased economic standing for American workers.
Semiconductors are upstream of everything that matters in the economy, and from a resourcing standpoint, it’s fairly clear the $50B allocated through the CHIPS Act is nowhere near the requisite scale of investment. I feel very strongly we need to act boldly to support a strong domestic manufacturing base for this technology – it’s probably an investment on the scale of the Manhattan project, but we’re funding it like California’s high speed rail initiatives.
What are your goals for Brightwave moving forward?
We’re building a system that will revolutionize how humans understand the world around them. Our goal is to create systems capable of reasoning through the complexities of the global economy, and it’s an incredibly ambitious undertaking. We've built an outstanding team and are actively scaling up our efforts.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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