Cigno was founded by Philippe Reynier (CEO), Nicolas Lagrèze (COO), and Vahan Avetisyan (CTO and Head of R&D). The Geneva-based startup automates the full consulting workflow, from research and data gathering through to structured recommendations, via multi-step workflows that replicate how consultants actually operate.

The platform is built on a proprietary reasoning model and specialised agents. It targets a gap the founders see as systemic: generic large language models are not fit for professional consulting, given weak deliverable quality, unreliable data, no standardisation, and data sovereignty risks.

Swiss Finance as Anchor Market

Cigno's first commercial wave has a clear sector focus. «Our first wave of consulting clients has a strong financial services practice in Switzerland and Europe,» Reynier told finews. «Their end clients are overwhelmingly Swiss and European banks, insurers and asset managers. Cigno is the AI infrastructure that enables these firms to deliver better and faster for their FS clients.»

The startup is incorporated as a Swiss entity with a sovereign-by-design architecture — European hosting, full client data isolation, and compliance infrastructure. Reynier describes this as «a prerequisite for Swiss financial institutions, and for the consultants who advise them.»

Former Bankers as Investors

The 1.5 million seed round was closed exclusively with operators from consulting, finance and technology. Backers include Lino Finini, former Group COO of Swissquote, Pasha Bakhtiar, former Group CEO of Reyl Intesa Sanpaolo and co-founder of Alpian Bank, Niresh Rajah, former Group CDO of Danske Bank, Arnaud Denis, former Group CEO of MeDirect, Hazem Mulhim, founder and CEO of Eastnets, and former Credit Suisse executive Martin Mende.

«I spent twenty years building the technological infrastructure that transformed Swissquote into a reference platform,» said Finini, who joins the board. «What I saw at Cigno is that same rigour: a team capable of building a real product in parallel with its fundraise.»

An Amplifier

Cigno's positioning is deliberately consultant-centric. Unlike tools that seek to disintermediate advisory firms, the platform enables each firm to encode its own methodology, sector expertise and client history into a structured, scalable asset — hosted in a controlled environment. Co-design workshops with around a hundred consulting leaders from major international firms informed the product architecture.

Reynier draws an analogy with legal tech: «Entire verticals are realising that generic LLMs will never be enough, because the value does not lie in the model itself. It lies in data contextualisation, sovereignty, and the ability to encode a firm's proprietary methodology.»

Deployments From June 2026

Pilot deployments are underway in Switzerland, France and the United Kingdom. The platform will be commercially available in June 2026 on a subscription model, with pricing tiered by deployment scope. Cigno also offers an AI Readiness Assessment to help firms map their artificial intelligence maturity before onboarding.

Looking ahead, several partner firms and independent consultants are considering deploying Cigno directly within Swiss banks for data and AI use cases — positioning the platform as a production infrastructure layer for mixed teams of consultants and internal staff.