VIAlab is a new generation of company that uses generative AI to produce the revolutionary and patent-pending VIA3 score that measures financial performance and sustainability, and brings visibility across the entire supply chain of capital.
Our mission is to create change by showing that you can make money while investing sustainably.
The VIA3 AI Score™ cuts through the noise. It’s our proprietary metric that looks beyond the balance sheet, using AI to fuse a company’s financial performance with its real-world sustainability impact into a single, forward-looking score.
At the heart of the platform is the VIA3 AI Score, a proprietary, AI-driven metric that unifies financial performance with genuine, measurable sustainability. By leveraging advanced artificial intelligence to analyze a vast array of structured and unstructured data—from financial statements and regulatory filings to supply chain data and real-time news—the VIA3 AI Score provides a holistic, dynamic, and forward-looking assessment of a company.
Focus on the supply chain of capital
Our vision is to integrate VIA3 across the entire supply chain of capital, from asset owners like retail investors and online brokerage platforms, to institutional investors, their advisors and managers in stewardship and portfolio construction
VIA3 Score
Based on financial performance and five dimensions of sustainability: Values, Impact, Analysis, Activism, and Alignment (VIA3), our AI assesses the entire supply chain of capital—from asset owners to financial consultants to managers, analyzing all asset classes—providing financial performance and sustainability at a glance.
Our score is deterministic allowing us to consistently measure all securities creating a wealth of tools built on it.
Stewardship
Promote long-term financial value creation by monitoring corporate disclosures, government filings, and media that provide transparency into demonstrated actions, duplicity, violations and remediation efforts.
Investor Compass
Enabling retail and institutional investors to define their values while focusing on financial performance. Our platform will allow our users to create new sets of securities driven by their compass to either create research notebooks, or create portfolios to backtest.
Portfolio Builder
Helps retail users, financial advisors, and asset managers construct optimal portfolios based on the Investor Compass profile. Offered in a Lite and Enterprise version that integrates sustainability and return metrics into institutional software for asset managers and family offices.
We are launching with a private beta…
VIAlab Clarity
A focus on financial return and sustainability.
The Six Pillars of the VIA3 AI Score
The VIA3 AI Score is composed of six deeply researched pillars:
Values: Assesses if a company’s activities align with core sustainability principles.
Impact: Measures the environmental and societal consequences of a company’s operations, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Analysis: Determines if the company is managing the most financially relevant ESG aspects of its business.
Alignment: Investigates whether a company’s stated commitments match its actions, guarding against “greenwashing” and hidden lines of business.
Activism: Evaluates the company’s engagement in lobbying, shareholder activism, and philanthropy related to sustainability.
Financial Performance: This pillar utilizes a pluggable framework, allowing investors to select their preferred methodology. The default method is an average of Buy, Sell, and Hold ratings from across all analysts.
Why Choose Us
Our Mission is to create change by showing that you can make money while investing sustainably
What are you waiting for?
Ready to take the next step? Let’s bring your transparancy and sustainability to your investments while making money! Explore how you can be the hero and part of the solution. Together, we’ll make it happen.
Our team
VIAlab merges profound expertise in sustainability and finance with decades of AI and technology leadership.
The VIA3 score was first conceived by Chad Spitler, a former BlackRock executive and founder of the respected ESG consultancy Third Economy in 2019. While his VIA3 system showed clear promise and accuracy in beta tests, the initial manual approach—costing $10,000 and months of analyst work per security—faced commercial headwinds and was only able to be used in product development.
Then, on November 30, 2022 and the launch of ChatGPT, Generative AI emerged as a transformative catalyst. Bryan Hughes, a 39-year technology leader, GenAI specialist, and trusted advisor to Chad for ten years, envisioned its potential. He saw that GenAI could finally make the robust VIA3 methodology scalable and highly cost-effective (pennies per score). This realization was the impetus for VIAlab cofounded by Bryan and Chad, strategically spun off to leverage this technological leap and deliver VIA3’s groundbreaking insights to the entire market.
Bryan Hughes
Co-Founder
35+ years in technology, 2 decades in startups, founded 3 companies as CEO and CTO, sold one to Nokia. Expert in generative AI. Founding member of the NVidia Jetson AI Lab Research Group.
Chad Spitler
Co-founder
25+ years in finance, built BlackRock’s sustainability and stewardship teams and advised the largest investors in the world on sustainability. Named 100 most influential people in governance by NACD. Dean’s Advisory Board University of Michigan SEAS.
Balazs Ree
co-founder
25+ years in enterprise web development, expert in robust application development, and long-term collaborator with Bryan.
Abbe Billings
Senior Advisor
16+ years in corporate governance & sustainability (ex-BlackRock), 30 years in sales enablement and client engagement.
Dr. Todd Cort
Yale School of Management
principal Advisor
Yale School of Management Metrics and standards for measuring the environmental impacts of fixed income investment products such as green bonds; underlying data for environmental, social and governance (ESG) that demonstrably drive corporate growth and improvement in equity value; and underwriting more sustainable insurance products – particularly around the means to measure effective climate adaptation
Dr. Joe Árvai
Director, Wrigley Institute, USC.
principal Advisor
Senior Researcher at the Decision Science Research Institute in Eugene, OR, and an Adjunct Professor in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Also science advisor to the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency; and member of the National Academies of Sciences’ Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate.
Jen O’Neil
principal Advisor
Founder, CEO, and investor with more than two decades of experience building and scaling category-defining marketplace companies. Jen co-founded Tripping.com, a vacation rental metasearch platform. As Chairman and CEO for nearly 10 years, she raised $60M+ in venture capital, scaled globally, and navigated complex growth, partnership, and board dynamics. That journey gave her deep experience in corporate governance, international expansion, capital markets, stakeholder alignment, and building great teams.
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