PROJECT ATLAS
We believe banking should be instant and hyper-personal. In the age of AI, customers should not have to wait days or weeks for generic, off-the-shelf products.
Delivering that requires rewiring banks from the inside out, using frontier AI technology to develop real-time decision intelligence - starting at the core, the balance sheet.
Welcome to Project Atlas.
Banking, rewired... for the age of AI
Research
Project Atlas is underpinned by frontier AI research that materially advances the foundations of real-time decision intelligence in banking.Inspired by the approaches used at DeepMind to build AlphaGo and AlphaZero, our research focuses on the application of deep learning techniques to the core problems of modern banking: pricing under uncertainty, sequential & optimal allocation of finite capital, inference within non-perfect information, and the extraction of signal from sparse, noisy data.Our first research papers are undergoing peer-review, due for publication Summer 2026. Get in touch below to receive our research as it's published.
Team
Nick Pedersen
Co-Founder & CEOFormer Head of Digital, NatWest.
15+ years scaling fintech and banking businesses with AI & digital products.
Oxford MBA (Dist), PGDip Artificial Intelligence (Dist).
Dr Aviv Yehezkel
Co-Founder & CTOFormer Co-Founder & CTO, Cynamics (AI cybersecurity).
PhD Computer Science, Technion. Oxford MBA.
Forbes 30 Under 30.
ADVISORS
Project Atlas is supported by a strong, diverse and growing panel of strategic advisors.
Niresh RajahChair of Financial Services at UKAI, former Chief Data Officer at Danske Bank and DLA Piper. Former Deputy Chief Data Officer at Barclays, and a globally recognised executive leader in Financial and Professional Services. Niresh brings institutional-grade fluency in deploying and regulating AI inside financial institutions.
Oliver ButcherFormer Head of Treasury Investments at NatWest and a specialist in bank treasury and balance sheet management. A design partner on Aurora, Atlas's deep reinforcement learning balance sheet optimisation agent. Oliver brings deep institutional expertise in the effective real-time risk management of a bank's balance sheet.
Simon NicklinFormer Head of UK FIG Solutions at NatWest and a seasoned finance and structuring leader across financial institutions. His career spans capital, funding and financial-institution structuring at the most senior level. Simon brings a deep understanding of balance sheet management across a variety of interest rate regimes
Cormac DonohoeFormer Head of Markets and Head of Securities Services at Citibank Europe. COO & Regulatory Lead Advisor at Armstrong Wolfe and a senior markets and governance leader across both complex balance sheets and transformation projects. Cormac brings front-line markets leadership and extensive regulatory expertise across jurisdictions.
Dr Chris PedersenAI researcher (PhD, UCL) formerly at Simons Foundation and NYU with work on frontier AI model development published at ICML and NeurIPS. Chris focusses on utilising advanced reinforcement learning to manage the development of frontier AI models and his cutting edge research underpins the Atlas models real-time decision intelligence.
Manisha ShastriA regulatory and transformation leader with 18+ years across financial services, working across technology and regulatory change. Former Senior Change & Delivery Lead at a global bank, where she ran complex regulatory programmes. Manisha brings deep expertise in delivering regulatory and technology transformation inside established banks.
Livia BenistyChief External Affairs Officer and former Chief Business Officer at Banking Circle and a recognised leader in regulation, financial crime, operational change and fintech. Over 17 years in financial services (Citi, BBVA, ComplyAdvantage), Livia brings deep expertise in change management and the operational build-out of a modern bank.
Dr Siddarth AroraAssociate Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Oxford and a recognised academic authority in the field. His work spans machine learning methodology and model validation across healthcare, energy markets and finance. Siddarth brings academic rigour and an independent challenge function to Atlas's models.
David KhanChief Risk Officer at Abel and a credit and risk leader with 25 years across personal, SME and corporate banking and fintech. Former Risk Director at TSB, Barclays and Santander, leading IFRS9 and capital programmes, and now building AI risk decisioning. David brings deep credit-risk expertise and a regulatory track record with both the PRA and FCA
Ben McConnellCTO of Abbeycross and a senior banking technology leader. Former Head of Digital Technology at NatWest Markets. Ben brings hands-on technology leadership spanning institutional banking, scale-up build and complex technology transformations.
Contact
Get in touch with us to hear about the future of banking.