We're building the intelligence layer for small business lending—tools that give every lender the decision-making power of the best underwriters in the industry.
Before starting Draco AI, Salman spent years as an MCA underwriter. Every day was the same grind: manually combing through bank statements, Googling merchants, cross-referencing positions, trying to catch stacking risk before it caught you. A single deal could take 45 minutes of tedious work—and that was if everything went smoothly.
The tools existed to handle parts of the workflow, but the underlying AI wasn't there yet. LLMs hadn't arrived, transformers were barely being experimented with. And the vendors serving the MCA industry? They were stuck in 2015—and most of them still are, offering clunky software that creates more work than it saves.
So we decided to build it ourselves.
Draco AI didn't happen overnight. We spent three years iterating—two failed attempts, countless pivots, and a lot of learning about what actually matters to underwriters (and what doesn't). The breakthrough came on the third attempt, when LLMs changed the game. The raw technology had real limitations—hallucinations, unreliable math, inconsistent outputs—but we saw what others didn't: with the right combination of algorithms, techniques, and agentic composition of AI models, those problems were solvable.
That's the approach we're built on. Not a single model hoping for the best, but purpose-built AI agents that break underwriting into structured steps—extracting, validating, cross-referencing, and reasoning—the same way a great underwriter does, just faster and more consistently.
“To automate the lending process, cut risk, and uncover the opportunities everyone else misses—so every lender can make faster, smarter decisions.”
Everything we do starts with accuracy. If the data isn't right, nothing downstream matters—not the insights, not the decisions, not the trust. We obsess over extraction quality because our customers are making real financial decisions based on what we give them.
We're not here to build another dashboard. We use AI to automate what used to take underwriters hours and surface insights they'd never have time to find on their own. The goal isn't to replace human judgment—it's to make it sharper.
We operate where finance meets frontier technology. Both move fast. We stay curious, iterate constantly, and treat every mistake as a lesson—not a setback.
We exist to help lenders make better decisions: reduce risk, move faster, and fund more of the right deals. If an insight doesn't change what someone does, it's not worth showing.
Not every good business fits a neat credit box. We use better data and smarter analysis to surface the businesses that deserve funding but get passed over by rigid, outdated models. Better underwriting should mean more opportunity, not less.
We're a small team doing hard things. That only works if everyone feels heard, respected, and aligned on where we're going. We protect our people's interests and give them real ownership over the problems we're solving.
CEO & Co-founder
Salman started his career as an MCA underwriter, where he reviewed hundreds of deals and learned firsthand what separates good underwriting from great underwriting. He later transitioned into AI engineering, building developer tools for AI—giving him the rare combination of deep domain expertise and technical chops that drives Draco AI's product.
At Draco AI, Salman leads product and go-to-market strategy, combining his underwriting experience with technical expertise to build tools that actually solve the problems he used to face.
CTO & Co-founder
Dave brings 30 years of software engineering and machine learning experience to Draco AI. A Caltech-educated ex-Googler, he's been solving complex technical problems since before "machine learning" was a buzzword.
As CTO, Dave drives Draco AI's technical architecture and AI strategy. He brings deep expertise in large-scale systems and document AI, and a sharp eye for where the technology is heading—how we compose models, what bets to make now, and how to build systems that stay ahead as the industry catches up. When you're building at the frontier, having someone in the room who's seen decades of technology cycles and is right about what comes next is an unfair advantage.
Strategic Advisor
John spent over two decades as a product and business leader at IBM, Google, and Hitachi Vantara, where he led multi-billion dollar product portfolios spanning databases, AI, and enterprise analytics. He's launched products from zero, scaled global teams of over 1,000 people, and sat across the table from C-suite buyers at the largest companies in the world.
As Strategic Advisor, John brings the kind of pattern recognition you only get from decades at the top of enterprise tech—helping Draco AI navigate go-to-market strategy, product positioning, and the conversations that matter when it's time to scale.
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