Jeff Weniger has joined Corgi Invest as Chief Investment Strategist after nearly a decade at WisdomTree Asset Management, where he served as Head of Equity Strategy. In his new role, Weniger will shape product strategy and lead market commentary and investor education efforts. Corgi Invest, the ETF platform of AI financial infrastructure company Corgi, manages approximately $944 million across 197 ETFs as of 17 August 2026. The platform develops thematic, leveraged, structured-buffer and fixed-income ETFs. Weniger brings over 20 years of experience in investment strategy and asset allocation. Before WisdomTree, he spent more than a decade at BMO, where he co-managed ETF model portfolios and served on the asset allocation committee. He is a CFA charterholder and frequent financial media commentator.

The VC-backed fintech using AI to challenge BlackRock and start a new fee war in ETFs. Published Fri, Aug 14 202610:00 AM EDT 0 seconds of 3 minutes, 58 seconds Volume 90% Listen 3min Key Points * Corgi Insurance CEO Nico Laqua says that he expects the fintech to soon challenge BlackRock for the lead in total number of ETFs available to investors. * The fintech startup has launched a massive suite of exchange-traded funds in record time, which Laqua told CNBC's "ETF Edge" was only possible through the use of AI to speed the regulatory approval process. * While BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have been among the dominant forces in pushing down fees on core index products, Corgi is pressuring managers of trendy ETF strategies including buffered income and single-stock funds, in some cases at roughly half the price of competitors, or even steeper discounts. The fee war was supposed to be all but over in the ETF industry, with dominant fund companies led by Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street pushing fund fees as close to zero as they can get. But Corgi Invest, the new ETF arm of VC-backed fintech Cori Insurance, has other ideas. The San Francisco-based startup, which recently reached a valuation of $2.6 billion in its latest funding round, came out of seemingly nowhere staring last December to launch a massive suite of ETFs - 197 and counting. By the end of the year, it expects to have more ETFs than the largest issuer in the U.S., BlackRock, Corgi CEO Nico Laqua said on this week's "ETF Edge." In some cases, Corgi is going head-to-head with the largest ETF companies in core areas of the market - it has an ultrashort bond ETF, for example, which has been among the most popular recent core fixed-income strategies from the fund giants, as well as a handful of other bond options out farther on the treasury curve. And its ultrashort bond fund does come in at a lower expense ratio than the already low-cost offerings from the fund giants. But Corgi has also issued a challenge to ETF managers that have boomed in recent years with more trendy, niche strategies such as buffered income funds that limit downside risk in the stock market, as well as single-stock ETFs that allow for outsize bets on big names from Tesla to Nvidia - and all of which charge a lot more annually to investors than the core stock and bond index funds from the ETF giants. Corgi's approach to leveraged ETFs also includes outsize bets on sectors of the market and secular themes, such as AI-themed trades. Its buffered income funds are currently charging an annual fee of 30 basis points to investors. Recent research on buffered funds show expense ratios that typically average 70 basis points and above. Corgi's Tesla 2x ETF has an expense ratio of 20 basis points, versus competing products that charge fees as high as 95 basis points. As an insurance company, Corgi stands to benefit from the new ETF arms race it has started. It needs to invest what is known as "the float" from its premiums in the markets, and that became a big motivating factor for the company get into the fund business. It can serve itself and its insurance customers with lower fee ETFs as places to allocate the float rather than going out and investing in higher-cost products, Laqua said. But the fintech's focus on using technology, specifically AI, to build a more efficient business model within the insurance industry was also a significant factor leading Corgi to ETFs, which were not in the original business plan. Laqua said highly regulated businesses are often the ones that are the hardest to disrupt, but AI is knocking down the barriers to entry. Use of AI has been critical to the company's ability to launch so many ETF products in such a short period of time, he said. That's because the process of regulatory approval comes down to written language skills, and that is a task that AI is very good at, Laqua said, and he added it is among the reasons why he believes before long the company will be the largest issuer of ETFs in the U.S. He also says that no matter how long it takes, the company will patiently wait for investors discover it, and over time, Corgi is betting that it will benefit from the same asset-gathering force in the fund world that has led Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street to a combined $3 trillion: low-cost wins in the end. Watch the full "ETF Edge" show above to hear directly from Laqua on his company's plans to upend the ETF market. He also went deeper into Corgi's strategic thinking in this week's "ETF Edge" podcast.