Registered investment advisors that have disclosed meaningful use of artificial intelligence are hiring more staff and outperforming peers on advisor productivity.
That is the central conclusion of the 2026 RIA Market Monitor, a new study released September 3, 2026, by Astraeus, an AI-native infrastructure company for wealth management based in New York City, in collaboration with Pirker Partners, a strategic advisory firm focused on business and technology innovation.
The report analyzed Form ADV Part 2A filings submitted by 6,384 independent private wealth RIAs as of March 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission's primary disclosure document, where firms describe their operations, services, and material business risks under a legal obligation to be accurate.
The researchers found that just 6% of independent private wealth RIAs disclosed any use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, or algorithmic tools in those filings.
But those firms collectively managed approximately 11% of industry assets under management, a concentration that underscores where AI deployment is actually taking hold.
Headcount grew 15% at firms disclosing AI use between April 2025 and April 2026, compared with 8% growth at non-disclosing firms, according to the Astraeus report.
At enterprise and large RIAs (those managing more than $5 billion in client assets) non-advisory, or operational, staff increased by a median of 14.2%, more than double the 6.7% growth rate recorded for advisory employees at the same firms.
"The firms moving fastest with AI are hiring people, investing in operational infrastructure, and building the capabilities necessary to support more sophisticated businesses," said Jon Stevenson, co-founder and president of Astraeus. "At this stage, AI appears to be creating capacity rather than replacing it."
The pattern challenges a broadly held assumption about AI's near-term impact on employment in financial services.
Rather than automating away positions, firms adopting AI are adding operations staff to implement, supervise, and maintain new systems; a dynamic the report's authors describe as the current technology being in an "infrastructure phase."
Size is the defining factor in adoption. Among RIAs managing between $5 billion and $25 billion, 16% disclosed AI use, against 7% of mid-sized firms and 5% of smaller RIAs, according to the Astraeus data.
Hybrid RIAs, which offer both fee-based and brokerage services and tend to have larger and more operationally complex middle offices, were more likely to disclose AI adoption (7.4% compared with 5.5% of fee-only firms).
This concentration at the top is consistent with a broader pattern across the RIA industry, where larger firms have led adoption of major technology shifts. Economies of scale give larger firms the financial flexibility to fund technology projects that smaller practices cannot yet justify.
The productivity findings are notable, even if the researchers cautioned against attributing them entirely to AI.
Among enterprise and large RIA adopters, assets under management per advisor grew by a median of 22% between April 2025 and April 2026, compared with 12% at same-sized firms without AI disclosures, per the Astraeus report.
The authors noted that AI-adopting firms were already growing faster than peers before widespread deployment began, suggesting that firms with the means to invest in AI are also those with the momentum to outperform.
"Meaningful adoption is occurring primarily among firms with the scale, resources, and operational complexity to invest in enterprise initiatives," said Alois Pirker, founder and chief executive of Pirker Partners. "This study provides a baseline for understanding where adoption actually stands and how it evolves over time."
What are RIAs actually doing with the technology? The most common disclosed use cases are operational.
Nearly half of disclosing firms referenced AI for administrative efficiency (note-taking, summarizing client meetings, updating CRM applications, and drafting documents) according to the Astraeus report.
Investment research was the second most common category, cited by just over one-third of disclosing firms. By contrast, fewer than 5% reported using AI as a direct input into asset allocation or security selection. Over half of enterprise, large, and mid-sized RIAs went further, including an explicit disclosure stating that AI does not make investment decisions.
That caution extends to how firms are communicating AI use with regulators. Forty-two percent of disclosures focused primarily on risks, while 55% balanced risks and benefits.
Only 4% were benefit-dominant. The report's authors argue this reflects the influence of legal counsel on disclosure language and means the public record on AI adoption among RIAs likely understates the actual level of usage across the industry.
"The firms that disclose are communicating under a legal standard of accuracy," said Andrew Lasky, head of GTM and strategy at Astraeus. "That makes the data especially valuable for understanding how firms are thinking about AI, even though actual usage almost certainly extends beyond what appears in public filings."
The investment complexity of AI-adopting RIAs adds another dimension to the picture.
Firms disclosing AI use were nearly twice as likely to offer private equity investments as non-disclosers (47% against 24%) and more than three times as likely to offer credit alternatives, according to the Astraeus data.
Over half of AI-adopting RIAs also offered access to hedge funds, compared with 38% of non-disclosers. The researchers attribute this overlap to AI's strength in extracting structured information from complex, unstructured documents, the kind of material that dominates alternative investment workflows.
The broader RIA industry continued to post strong results in 2025. Private wealth RIAs managed $8.4 trillion in assets under management as of April 2026, with the median firm growing AUM by 15.7% in 2025, broadly in line with the S&P 500's 17.9% return for the year, per the Astraeus report.
Enterprise hybrid firms led with median AUM growth of 32%, fueled in part by acquisition activity. The top three hybrid RIAs by AUM alone closed or announced nearly 20 acquisitions in 2025.
Astraeus and Pirker Partners intend to update the RIA Market Monitor annually, with subsequent editions designed to track whether early AI adopters maintain their productivity edge, whether headcount patterns shift as the technology matures, and whether the risk-dominant tone of current disclosures softens as AI use becomes more routine.
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