Oli Wales
| Oli Wales | |
| Occupation | Chief Technology Officer, co-founder of Arva AI |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founding Arva AI |
| Education | Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, University of Cambridge |
Oli Wales is a British software engineer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Arva AI, a financial technology company that develops artificial intelligence agents to automate anti-money laundering (AML), know your business (KYB), and know your customer (KYC) compliance operations for banks and fintechs. Arva AI was part of the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch.[1]
Early life and education
Wales graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.
Career
Prior to founding Arva AI, Wales held several engineering roles in the technology sector. He worked at The Trade Desk, Chimnie, Iventis, and Ocado Technology. He subsequently served as Lead Product Engineer at Opvia, a company that later rebranded as Seal.
Wales co-founded Arva AI alongside Rhim Shah. As CTO, Wales leads the technical development of the company's AI agent platform. Arva AI's products are designed to replace the manual work performed by human compliance analysts at financial institutions. The company's platform automates financial crime reviews across several areas, including screening, onboarding, and transaction monitoring. According to the company, its AI agents can automate up to 92% of all financial crime reviews and process over one million reviews per month.[2]
Arva AI offers three core products: Screening AI, which the company states can discount 91% of screening alerts; KYB/C AI, which accelerates customer and business onboarding; and Transaction Monitoring AI, which handles AML transaction monitoring alerts. The company's stated goal is to build a full suite of AI-powered workers capable of handling manual compliance tasks for banks and fintechs.
The company's clients include OakNorth Bank, which reported an 84% reduction in screening alerts after adopting Arva AI's technology. Other early adopters include fintech companies Tola and Keep.
In January 2025, Arva AI raised a $3 million seed round led by Gradient, Google's early-stage AI fund.
References
- ↑ "Arva AI – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.
- ↑ "Arva AI". 'Arva AI}'. Retrieved 2026-03-18.