Vanilla was founded in 2019 by wealth management veteran Steve Lockshin and launched its first product in early 2023. The company has raised more than $85 million in total funding, including a $35 million round in 2024 led by Insight Partners with participation from Venrock, Vanguard, Edward Jones Ventures, Nationwide, and Allianz. Clients include major wealth management firms such as Vanguard, Mariner Wealth Advisors, and Avantax.
The platform is designed for financial advisors and RIAs rather than individual clients, providing tools to review existing estate documents, model planning scenarios, generate plan summaries, and identify planning gaps across an advisor's entire book of business. Its AI layer can extract and analyze data from uploaded estate planning documents within minutes, surfacing opportunities for advisors to initiate estate planning conversations.
Vanilla's Document Builder allows advisors to help clients obtain revocable trusts, pour-over wills, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives through a guided workflow, without requiring deep estate law expertise on the advisor's part. The platform is backed by a team with over 180 combined years of trust and estate legal experience who support the technology layer.
Vanilla's advisor-first design distinguishes it from attorney-facing document drafting tools. Rather than automating document production for estate attorneys, Vanilla focuses on enabling financial advisors to lead estate planning conversations and connect clients with appropriate legal services, addressing the gap between financial planning and estate document execution.
Hands-on review pending.
