Edward Jones Ventures held its first annual summit, drawing more than 150 attendees.
The event is central to how Edward Jones Ventures operates: rather than functioning like a typical venture capital shop chasing financial returns, the firm says it prioritizes solving challenges its own advisors and clients face, according to St. Louis Magazine. Edward Jones pairs portfolio company founders directly with its financial advisors so that real-world feedback shapes product design, and the firm has no plans to move the summit out of St. Louis. Greg Robinson, the Edward Jones partner who leads Edward Jones Ventures, said the firm intentionally holds the event in the city and wants to make St. Louis an enduring innovation hub, adding that the summit will continue to be held there and expand in future years.
That ambition lines up with numbers Robinson shared elsewhere about the venture arm's growth. Edward Jones Ventures' portfolio has grown to 15 companies with 10 active commercialization efforts underway, and the firm completed four new investments in 2026, according to InvestmentNews. The model leans heavily on the firm's roughly 20,000 financial advisors, more than 70% of whom have already been engaged through pilots or other activities tied to the venture portfolio, per the same outlet's reporting.
Advisors as Product Testers
Edward Jones Ventures relies on its financial advisors to test ideas and support its portfolio companies; more than 70% of its roughly 20,000 advisors have engaged through pilots or other activities tied to the portfolio.
Flock Homes aims to make managing rental real estate portfolios easier.
Estate Planning and Long-Term Care Tools
Vanilla, a Bellevue, Washington-based software platform that streamlines estate planning, is slated to roll out more broadly to financial advisors early in 2027.
Waterlily, a San Francisco-based AI platform that predicts long-term-care costs and the resources clients may need, is another portfolio company. CapIntel, another portfolio company, offers a tool for building investment presentations more efficiently.
A Minority Stake in Fraud Protection
Edward Jones has also invested in Carefull, a San Francisco-based financial safety platform built to guard against scams, fraud and costly mistakes affecting older adults. Todd Rovak, Carefull's CEO and co-founder, said Edward Jones' broad financial wellness strategy helps guide the startup's product roadmap, and described the firm's investment as functioning like a stamp of approval for Carefull in the marketplace. Edward Jones is making Carefull's monitoring technology — which watches accounts for suspicious transactions and behavior changes associated with scams — available to its more than 9 million clients through its network of more than 20,000 advisors, according to InvestmentNews.
The fraud-protection push comes against a backdrop of rising losses nationally. Cyber-enabled crimes defrauded Americans of nearly $21 billion in 2025, up from $16.6 billion the year before, per FBI figures cited by InvestmentNews. Losses among people over 60 climbed to $7.75 billion in 2025 from $4.88 billion in 2024, the same figures show — a trend that helps explain why a firm serving millions of clients across tens of thousands of advisors is betting on tools like Carefull.
St. Louis's Funding Gap
A 2025 report from TechSTL found that local startup activity grew 50% in 2024 and job creation rose 34%.
The TechSTL report identified access to capital as the region’s greatest business-growth barrier. Early-stage investment capital is just hard to come by in St. Louis and the broader Midwest, according to a January 2025 report from St. Louis Public Radio. Venture capitalist Vikram Lakhwara told the station that the volume and density of investors, founders and supporters in St. Louis does not match San Francisco or New York. The TechSTL report also found that 58 of 127 regional entrepreneur-support resources had significantly changed or closed between 2020 and 2025.
Local grant programs offer one comparison point for how St. Louis has tried to close that funding gap. Arch Grants, which awarded $100,000 non-dilutive Growth Grants to companies including Figozo, King of the Curve and iSite Media, requires recipients to match that award with at least $200,000 in outside capital, per St. Louis Public Radio. Since 2021, Arch Grants has issued 16 such Growth Grants, and recipients have gone on to raise roughly $90 million and add more than 400 jobs in the region, according to the organization's executive director.
Edward Jones Ventures' approach differs in scale and structure, built instead around the firm's own advisor network and its relationship-driven way of working with startups. Edward Jones Ventures seeks out companies that solve challenges tied to serving Edward Jones clients, and with its portfolio set to keep growing, the firm's leadership has made clear that St. Louis will remain the stage where those pitches play out.
