Moment’s Moment: Investing in the Future of Fixed Income

Fixed income is one of the world’s largest financial markets—roughly 50% larger than global equities. And yet, despite its immense scale, it remains stuck in a bygone era. Traders bounce between fragmented platforms. Portfolio managers live and die by spreadsheets. Risk and compliance checks are run by phone, chat, or not at all. Even with the rise of electronic trading, true automation has barely touched the core workflows.

Moment is radically changing that. They’re building the first operating system for fixed income: an AI-powered platform that unifies and automates trading, research, portfolio construction, and risk and compliance workflows in one vertically integrated system. Their customers—financial institutions collectively managing over $3.5 trillion in assets—use it to execute thousands of trades in seconds, build tax-optimized portfolios with a single natural language prompt, and scan millions of accounts and trades for compliance issues in real-time. And the opportunity is only growing, with the global fixed income market now estimated to be over $150 trillion in total.

At Index, we’ve partnered with some extraordinary fintech startups over the years—industry disruptors like Robinhood, Adyen, Wise, Revolut, and Plaid, who have taken on incumbents and changed how people invest, pay, and move money around the world. Fixed income has long been on our radar, but for a multitude of reasons—fragmentation, opacity, and regulatory red tape—it has eluded us. We’ve known that cracking it would take more than a great product; it would take deep domain expertise, technical precision, and a founding team with conviction and a vision for reimagining the whole asset class.

In 2014, we led a Series A investment in Credit Benchmark, a data analytics provider that aggregates consensus credit views from leading banks. Since then, I’ve had the good fortune of sitting on the board alongside Lee Olesky, co-founder and longtime CEO of Tradeweb, a $30 billion company that helped bring fixed income trading online. Lee knows this market better than almost anyone, and over the years, I’ve taken the opportunity to pick his brain about what it would take to build a truly next-generation platform in this space.

Earlier this year, when I started discussing a potential investment with Moment’s co-founder and CEO, Dylan Parker, I knew I wanted Lee’s input. He didn’t sugarcoat it: what Dylan and the team were building was incredibly ambitious. I asked Dylan if he’d be up for chatting with Lee, and Dylan—ever curious and eager to learn—leapt at the chance. After their conversation, Lee came back to me and said, “These guys are the real deal. They’re onto something special.” Coming from someone like Lee—a true legend and innovator in fixed income—that meant a lot. It confirmed what we were already feeling: that after years of watching and waiting for the right company, we’d finally found it, at exactly the right moment.

What makes Moment different is the way it integrates and automates every layer of the fixed income workflow: sourcing, execution, compliance, and optimization. Traders can automatically route and execute orders. Portfolio managers can generate personalized investing strategies in seconds. Risk teams can monitor trades for violations using fully customizable rules. And everything is built on modern architecture with a UI that looks delightful—something not often seen in the industry.

There are certain echoes of Robinhood in what Moment is doing—opening up access to a market long gated by complexity, clunky infrastructure, and opaque information. The approach is different—rather than competing with wealth platforms, Moment is empowering them with the tools to access, trade, and manage fixed income intelligently and at scale. Yet the spirit is the same: unlocking institutional-grade wealth creation tools for the broader retail and wealth management universe.

Moment brings a unique insider-outsider perspective as well. Although they deeply understand this market and have been at the forefront of innovation in the space, they bring a Silicon Valley mindset to the way they challenge and disrupt the status quo. The founders, Dylan, Dean, and Ammer, were close friends at Harvard, where they studied math, engineering, and computer science. After school, they helped build the first automated credit desk at Citadel, one of the world's most sophisticated trading firms. Their former manager there, Anish Karyat, who spent 15 years at Jane Street before leading Dylan and Dean’s team at Citadel, joined Moment last June as Chief Markets Officer. This is a team that knows fixed income because they’ve helped shape it, and now they’re reimagining it from first principles.

The timing couldn’t be better. As interest rates have climbed from near-zero to 5%, fixed income volumes have surged, with many institutions seeing 200-300% increases in profits in just a few years. At the same time, electronic trading in corporate bonds has soared from $500 billion to $5 trillion annually over the last decade. The market needs infrastructure that can keep up. With leading fintechs already working with Moment and major institutions like LPL Financial, among others, coming on board, it’s clear the demand is real. With tailwinds like these, it’s only going to accelerate.

Moment has the right team to capitalize on that momentum. After my first dinner with Dylan in New York, he told me he had to run. I didn’t think he meant it literally. It was after 10 p.m., but he still had to get in his daily workout and go for an hour-long run. That moment offered a glimpse into the passion and discipline I’ve seen from Dylan, Dean, and Ammer ever since. It’s evident in how they discuss building technology, obsess over solving customer problems, and hire exceptional talent. It’s obvious in their conviction to undertake a vision as ambitious as reinventing one of the world’s largest financial markets. And it's reflected time and again in their product vision and roadmap for Moment.

Sometimes it takes a decade for the right idea, the right market, and the right people to come together. We’re excited to lead Moment’s $36 million Series B and support them as they build the future of fixed income. To Dylan, Dean, Ammer, and everyone at Moment—this is your moment. We can’t wait to see what you build.