Brightwave

Brightwave builds AI tools for professional research and is shifting its focus toward agent infrastructure that governs access to business systems, tools and data. Its research agents support private equity diligence; the infrastructure under development covers private model routes, credential injection, policy enforcement and activity records. Tidebreak is the client at the edge of this system, running its engine locally. Users can produce spreadsheets, presentations and memos, switch model providers mid-task, and run coding agents in isolated Git worktrees with changes reviewed before reaching their branch.

Founded in 2023 by Mike Conover and Brandon Kotara, Brightwave is now led by Kotara as CEO. Conover previously led open-source language model engineering at Databricks; Kotara was CTO of LedgerX. Brightwave’s engineering work includes a Rust host broker that mediates cloud-agent access to a user’s machine. Scoped permissions and explicit human grants govern access, separating enforcement from the model’s judgment.

Brightwave raised $6 million in seed funding in June 2024 and closed a $15 million Series A that October, led by Decibel Partners. In June 2024, it reported that customer firms collectively managed more than $120 billion in assets, spanning small investment advisers and major hedge funds.