The integration challenge that led Vitals AI to shut down

Vitals AI, an advisor data reporting startup that spun out of the Florida-based hybrid RIA Csenge Advisory Group, has decided to shut down operations about a year after its launch.

Jack Csenge, who joined the $4 billion Csenge Advisory Group in 2016 and launched Vitals AI in March 2025, announced the closure in a LinkedIn post that said Vitals AI had dozens of firms as clients and $10 billion in platform assets under management. The efforts and funding needed to scale Vitals AI was more than what Csenge and his five-team staff intended to put into the side-project, which was first established to support data reporting at Csenge Advisory Group.

“The core of what we were doing was just business intelligence for advisors, and there was a path for funding—we were talking with VCs, with additional investors to keep scaling it,’ Csenge told InvestmentNews. “We had a full team of part-time people running this project, and it was growing and growing slow, but I think we realized the project was going to cost a lot more capital and a lot more time than we initially anticipated.”

A breaking point for Vitals AI was trying to meet the integration requirements for firms that deploy different mixes of CRMs (Customer Relationship Management), custodians and other portfolio systems in their tech stack.

“You can talk to a Wealthbox and Orion firm, they love [Vitals AI], they sign up. Then you get a Wealthbox-Black Diamond firm, and they're like, can you build an integration? Then you get a Wealthbox-Altruist firm, can you build the next integration?,” explained Csenge. “The question was, do we really want to build, like, 10,000 integrations? And, if that's the case, then how much capital do I need to raise to do that, we were bootstrapping it.”

The crowded market for startups building AI software products for advisors includes Jump and Avantos, both described as AI-native operating systems. Jump raised an $80 million Series B and is used by RIAs such as Csenge, while Avantos raised $25 million Series A in February. Speaking broadly about AI tools marketed to advisors, Csenge described an “over promise and under deliver” dynamic.

“Most of them, what they advertise and then what they actually do are very far, there's a big chasm between what they do and what they say they do,” said Csenge. “Everything's an AI operating system now, everything's going to automate everything you do, but a lot of it is still manual clunky work on the back end.”

Vitals AI will continue to run for about a month, allowing users to wind down their ties to the software and keeping open the possibility for an outside acquisition of the technology. 

“Part of our decision for changing what we were working on is the legacy tools the way they are today, if you're going to integrate with Fidelity, Schwab, Pershing, or the next bank, or you're going to do performance reporting tools or planning tools, all these tools are beholden to the APIs and the structure of that tool they're working with,” said Csenge. 

“And the hard part is you'll get these updates saying this product now integrates with this. And maybe it does, maybe it stores your information, but the functionality of using it with your AI tool doesn't work very well. And so I think right now, there's a lot of stuff being sold that doesn't actually do anything.”

Csenge oversees about $500 million in assets on his small team within an advisory firm that manages nearly $4 billion in AUM.

“I think from a stress standpoint, from a family standpoint, I'd rather stick with the family advisory firm that's doing well, that's growing, thriving, and gives me time with my kids versus being at a different conference every four weeks trying to sell software.”