Railblocks 2.0: AI Operating Systems for Investment Firms
Vladimir Oustinov Co-founder
Eric Friedman and Nate Snow join Railblocks as co-founders, continuing a shared mission at the intersection of finance, operations, and engineering.
Railblocks helps clients build and own the systems behind their operations, bringing operating experience and engineering capabilities into one embedded team. We work alongside clients to understand their business, build around their needs, and make AI useful in their daily work.
A partnership built through working together
Through collaborating on client projects together, we found a shared approach: understand how firms operate, embed alongside the people closest to the problems, and build systems around their needs.
We’re excited to announce that Eric Friedman and Nate Snow are joining Railblocks as co-founders alongside Lorenzo Castro, Florian Bühringer, and Vladimir Oustinov.
As AI opened new possibilities for how teams work, we saw growing demand for embedded engineering inside client teams. Over the past two years we have built our own AI Operating System technology on top of Cloudflare infrastructure, and deployed them across top-tier investment firms, VC funds, Private Equity shops, and other clients.
Together, we brought together experience across finance, operations, and engineering with reusable technology for connecting data, workflows, and AI. Working alongside clients showed us how much more we could build together.
Today, we work with venture capital firms, private equity firms, and family offices. We bring the same approach to other businesses whose financial and operational complexity benefits from embedded engineering.
What we build, and how we work
- Embed with the team. Our forward deployed engineers work directly with the people doing the work to understand their workflows, identify useful applications of AI, and build software that fits their operations. This gives clarity before any coding.
- A custom Operating System built with proven blocks. We use reusable technology and patterns developed through client work, giving each project a foundation to build on.
- Deploy securely within the firm’s environment. We work within clients’ platforms and infrastructure, accounting for their existing tools, permissions, and security requirements. Companies own the data, the IP.
We describe this connected foundation as a firm’s own Operating System: data, workflows, and software brought together so people and AI agents can perform useful work with clear permissions, oversight, and accountability.
Each firm’s needs inform the implementation. We build on its existing technology and work alongside its internal teams and external technology and security partners.
Continuing the mission
With Eric and Nate joining, our ambition is clear: become the go-to engineering partner for AI implementation within investment firms.
To deliver on that ambition, we’re developing our technology further and scaling our forward-deployed engineering team. As AI becomes part of daily operations, that means making firm-owned Operating Systems faster to build and easier to evolve, while growing our capacity to work directly alongside clients. Our focus remains on understanding their businesses, delivering useful systems, and helping those systems evolve with their needs.
If your firm is exploring where AI can make a practical difference in its operations, we’d welcome a conversation.