Kato careers

Lenders spend over $24B every year hiring agents to perform manual, repetitive servicing work. Existing AI solutions try to automate this, but they treat regulatory guardrails as an afterthought.

Kato takes a different approach.

Regulations aren’t an afterthought - they’re the foundation. We start with a regulatory rules system and layer an AI decision engine on top of it. With this architecture, we’re building an AI-powered servicing platform that automates critical workflows across every channel with full compliance and best-in-class recoveries.

We are starting today with a compliance first Voice AI agent that handles outbound and inbound loan servicing calls, and are already in production with major names in the fintech lending space like Bilt Rewards, Bluevine and Parafin.

Here's what makes us different from most venture-backed startups: we're profitable with strong unit economics, so we own our destiny. We're not forced to raise capital to survive; we'll raise strategically, on our terms, to accelerate the business when it makes sense. That changes how we work:

- We make long-term decisions. We optimize for durable, long-term value, not short-term vanity metrics.
- We run like a real business. We focus on what matters and have no patience for false busyness.
- You share in what we build. Through profit sharing, when the company does well, you do well.

We're looking for people who want to build deliberately, operate with discipline, and share in what we create.

Kato is founded by a team with deep operating expertise in financial services and software engineering:
- Pratik Risbud (CEO/Co-Founder): Former Investment Banker at Goldman Sachs and led Credit/Operations at Brex
- David Zhu (CTO/Co-Founder): Former Software Engineer at Google and Engineering Manager at Brex

Kato is backed by institutional capital from Pear VC and angel investors from top tech companies such as Brex, Bridge, and Square.