Soo Yung Cho

Soo Yung Cho
Occupation	Co-founder and CTO, Powder
Known for	Co-founding Powder, an AI document analysis platform for wealth advisors
Education	Computer Science – The Johns Hopkins University; Carnegie Mellon University; Cornell University

Soo Yung Cho is a software engineer and entrepreneur who is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Powder, an artificial intelligence platform that automates document analysis and sales workflows for wealth advisors. Powder participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch.

Career

Before co-founding Powder, Cho held engineering positions at several technology and financial technology companies, including Addepar, Samsung Electronics, Neustar, EAT Club, and Wize Commerce (formerly Nextag). Cho was also involved with Real Capital Innovation (RCI Navigator), where he worked alongside future Powder co-founder Kanishk Parashar. RCI was later acquired by Addepar.

Cho holds degrees in computer science and software engineering from The Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Cornell University.

In 2023, Cho co-founded Powder alongside Kanishk Parashar, David Goerz, and Dominic Tully. The company is headquartered in Los Altos, California. Cho serves as CTO, where he co-leads product roadmap planning and technical development.

Powder is an AI-powered platform designed to help wealth advisors create personalized sales proposals for prospective clients. Using large language models (LLMs), the platform automates tasks that are traditionally performed manually, including parsing financial documents, capturing insights from client meetings, and generating portfolio analyses. The platform supports a wide range of document types, including brokerage statements, 401(k) and IRA accounts, tax returns, estate documents, balance sheets, and insurance records. Powder claims over 99 percent accuracy in its document parsing capabilities.

The platform has three core features: a document parser for brokerage, tax, and estate documents; a meeting notetaker that captures personalized client insights; and a portfolio analysis tool that evaluates returns, risk, and fees. The company's stated mission is to "democratize access to wealth with generative AI."

Powder's clients include financial technology firms; the company has highlighted a case study with Koyfin, which integrated Powder's API into its own fintech platform. As of 2025, Powder had approximately six employees and was actively hiring founding engineers to work on AI agent development.