Addepar's ADX tackles 'swivel chair problem' for advisor data sources

Addepar has launched Addepar Data Exchange (ADX), a managed data environment designed to help wealth management firms unify fragmented data and deploy artificial intelligence at scale across their operations.

The New York-based fintech, whose platform manages more than $9 trillion in assets across 1,400-plus firms globally, acquired AI workflow startup Arcus last year to support Addepar's annual $100 million R&D investment. The new ADX rollout follows Addepar's multi-year infrastructure overhaul built on Databricks and hosted on AWS.

For many advisory firms, data lives in disconnected systems including portfolio management tools, CRMs, general ledgers and third-party market data providers. Bob Pisani, Addepar's chief technology officer, described this as the "swivel chair problem," where advisors and operations teams must toggle between multiple platforms to get a full picture of their operations and client data.

ADX is designed to eliminate that friction. Beyond surfacing Addepar's native investment data including positions, transactions, tax lots and ownership details, the exchange allows firms to ingest external data and build custom models on top of it.

"They can bring other types of data — their own internal financial data, revenue data, data from CRMs, data from general ledgers, data from third-party partners," Pisani said. "By doing that, suddenly you now have a complete picture of a client, and a client now has a complete picture of their business."

That unified view opens the door to more nuanced analysis across an advisor's business. Pisani said advisors will be able to address questions that previously required jumping between systems.

"How do they think about how my clients earn that business money? How do they grow their client relationships? How do they engage more deeply? How they select the right products and ultimately offer that out? How do they compensate and compete for advisor talent?" said Pisani. "There's so many things that now ADX can help clients unlock."

ADX also serves as the infrastructure layer for Addison, Addepar's native AI assistant. With access to a broader, unified dataset, Addison can deliver more contextually grounded outputs and firms can extend it with their own models and analytical logic to support custom, agentic workflows.

Pisani said the shift toward AI-first experiences is accelerating. "Over the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to see an inversion within our clients' experience at Addepar. We think it will become AI first, data first, where almost exclusively clients will be using AI from day one."

He added that the technology needs to work at enterprise scale, not just in isolated experiments. "Anybody can vibe code something these days — that's great, but you can't actually make it work across dozens, hundreds or thousands of people, nor at enterprise grade scale. That's where Addepar is absolutely focused."

While ADX is seeing its strongest early uptake among mid to large-size firms navigating M&A-driven growth, Pisani confirmed there are no restrictions by firm size and all 1,400-plus Addepar clients can access it.

"I think the biggest value prop for a client is when you're growing if you look at the M&A that's happening in the industry, it's highly inquisitive. So companies are growing inorganically as much as they're growing organically," said Pisani. "The value really comes from the ability to see all that data, to integrate all that data. ADX is a way to get data in and out of the platform much more quickly and with much greater impact."