SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / November 12, 2026 / The Missing Inventory
Imagine owning an apartment in San Francisco, cryptocurrencies scattered across several wallets, shares in a startup that might one day be worth millions, or nothing at all, and perhaps a family home or a vintage car inherited from your grandparents. Some of these assets have a clear market price, others have never been valued, and a few may have been forgotten altogether. Yet together, they represent something considerably more significant than the balance displayed in a banking application.
Now consider a question that should be remarkably simple: what do you actually own, and how much is it worth?
Your bank cannot give you the complete answer, nor can your accountant, lawyer or wealth manager. Each sees only a fragment of your financial life. We can transfer millions of dollars across the world in seconds, yet reconstructing everything a person possesses remains surprisingly difficult.
This is the problem behind Inventory, the first individual-facing application developed by Successions Technologies, a company co-founded by Hubert Saint Olive and Andy Riedel, combining Saint Olive's background in traditional European banking with Riedel's experience in Silicon Valley engineering. Backed by leading family offices and senior banking professionals across Europe and the United States, the company has spent its first year developing specialized AI software for financial institutions.
After a year developing specialized AI software for banks and family offices, Successions is opening Inventory to its first individual users in the United States on November 10, with complimentary access during a limited introductory period. Its ambition is to create a living record of everything a person owns, independently of where those assets are held, and make that information understandable and useful throughout their lifetime. Early users may also benefit from privileged access to the company's future financing and liquidity solutions, designed to help individuals unlock financial opportunities from assets they already own.
But the origins of this idea go considerably beyond financial technology.
What America Taught Its Founder About Wealth
Over the course of a decade spent studying American democracy, Hubert Saint Olive traveled across dozens of states, far beyond the familiar worlds of New York and Los Angeles. His research into American society, politics and the media, which eventually became the foundation of a book, also led him to examine how Americans understand, accumulate and pass on wealth. One difference particularly interested him: while talking about money in Europe remains almost a sin, a subject surrounded by discretion, embarrassment and occasionally moral suspicion, Americans tend to discuss it more openly, often as a means of independence, achievement and opportunity.
Yet what struck Saint Olive most was not the extraordinary fortunes of Silicon Valley billionaires or Wall Street financiers. It was the wealth encountered among ordinary Americans, in places and circumstances that rarely feature in financial publications. A family house purchased decades ago, a collection of inherited objects, an old automobile, shares in a small business, or land passed from one generation to another. Across the country, families had accumulated assets whose economic potential was not always understood, documented or accessible.
Some possessions carried sentimental value, others represented considerable financial resources, and many existed somewhere between the two. His observations suggested that wealth was far more widespread than the financial industry generally acknowledged, although much of it remained invisible to the institutions designed to manage it.
This perspective also resonated with Saint Olive's own family history. A ninth-generation descendant of a French banking family, he comes from a lineage whose activities evolved from Lyon's silk trade to private banking. Across those generations, the forms of wealth continually changed, but the questions of ownership, preservation and transmission remained remarkably similar.
The more his research revealed the diversity of wealth across American society, the more obvious another question became: why should the ability to understand and develop that wealth remain largely reserved for those who already have substantial financial assets?
Beyond Money: The Transfer
These observations led Saint Olive to write The Transfer, a paper shared with banks and public institutions in Europe and the United States, exploring how wealth passes between generations and how it can create new economic opportunities.
Modern finance has become extraordinarily sophisticated at measuring money, but considerably less effective at understanding wealth in its broader sense. A family business has a balance sheet, but also generations of knowledge, professional relationships and entrepreneurial experience. A house has a market price, but may also provide collateral for a new venture. An inherited collection may carry cultural significance while representing capital that has never been identified or valued.
Not everything valuable can, or should, be converted into money. Yet some of what families possess could become financial resources if it were properly understood, documented and, when appropriate, mobilized.
This distinction matters particularly for younger generations. An entrepreneur may possess knowledge, intellectual property and extraordinary potential without having access to the capital required to develop them. Meanwhile, considerable wealth remains accumulated within older generations, often preserved but not necessarily deployed toward new economic opportunities.
According to Cerulli Associates, an estimated $124 trillion is expected to change hands between generations in the United States through 2048. The challenge, as Successions sees it, is not simply to transfer these assets efficiently when their owners pass away, but to understand how accumulated wealth might create opportunities while those generations are still alive.
This is where two worlds that have shaped Saint Olive's thinking began to converge: philanthropy, concerned with expanding opportunity, and traditional banking, capable of organizing and financing economic activity. The ambition is not to turn every possession into a financial product, but to make more of the wealth already present in society visible and potentially productive.
Before that can happen, however, something fundamental is missing.
Everyone Should Have an Inventory
Banks know their clients' deposits, brokerage firms know their investments, property registries record real estate, and lawyers maintain documents governing trusts and family companies. But no institution necessarily understands the complete estate of an individual, particularly when assets are spread across jurisdictions and ownership structures.
Inventory was developed to address precisely this fragmentation.
Through a powerful AI engine, individuals can identify and organize their assets, interpret documents, record ownership information and maintain valuations without manually reconstructing their entire financial lives in spreadsheets. A property deed can identify a house, a financial statement can reveal investments, and an appraisal can provide an updated valuation. Missing information can be identified, while proposed changes remain subject to the owner's approval.
The platform was developed from technology initially designed for financial institutions, where accuracy, confidentiality and complex ownership structures are essential. According to Successions, individual records are encrypted and isolated, personal financial data is not used to train shared AI models, and access can be controlled by the owner.
The objective is to combine the sophistication and discretion of private banking with the simplicity of a consumer application, making a comprehensive understanding of wealth available far beyond the traditional private banking clientele.
But an inventory should not be considered merely an administrative document prepared for inheritance. Successions envisions it as a lifelong instrument, something that evolves as people acquire assets, build businesses, inherit property, develop new capabilities and make decisions about their future. Knowing what one owns is the first step toward understanding what one might be able to build.
The first individuals joining Inventory will also have an opportunity to help shape the next generation of financial tools developed by Successions. While the company's more advanced applications, covering estate planning, inheritance taxation, asset distribution and financing, are currently being developed for banks and family offices, early users may be offered privileged access to selected tools as they become available to individuals. The ambition is ultimately to make capabilities traditionally reserved for institutional clients accessible to a much broader audience.
From Preserving Wealth to Creating Opportunity
For generations, financial institutions have concentrated on helping those who already possess capital manage and preserve it. The coming decades offer an opportunity to rethink that relationship, particularly as wealth moves between generations and new forms of entrepreneurship require different approaches to financing.
A comprehensive inventory could eventually support estate planning, financial decisions and new forms of credit, allowing certain assets to become sources of opportunity rather than remaining dormant until inheritance. It could also help families recognize that their wealth extends beyond what appears on a bank statement, even when not every component can be assigned a financial price.
This is ultimately the broader ambition behind Successions: to connect a better understanding of existing wealth with the possibilities it could create for future generations.
For the company, Inventory represents the first step toward bringing its technology beyond the institutional market. After a year building software for banks and family offices, Successions is now testing whether the same capabilities can serve individuals whose financial lives are increasingly complex, fragmented and difficult to understand.
The financial industry has spent decades perfecting how money moves. Perhaps it is time to devote comparable attention to understanding what people possess, what those assets represent and what they might make possible.
The next great financial revolution might not begin with moving money. It might begin with discovering what we are really worth.
Successions Technologies Inc.
Co-founded by Hubert Saint Olive and Andy Riedel
Explore Inventory: https://successions.ai/inventory
Contact:
Inventory@successions.ai
Media@successions.ai
SOURCE: Successions
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