Zocks CEO Mark Gilbert Named "Innovator of the Year" at the 2026 WealthBriefing WealthTech Americas Awards

Zocks, the enterprise-grade, privacy-first AI platform for financial services, proudly announces that Co-Founder and CEO Mark Gilbert has been named Innovator of the Year (US) at the fifth annual WealthBriefing WealthTech Americas Awards 2026. This recognition highlights Gilbert’s visionary leadership in shifting the wealth management landscape away from basic, unstructured AI transcription tools toward specialized, AI client intelligence platforms. Under his direction, Zocks has scaled to serve over 5,000 financial services firms (including elite RIAs like Carson Group and Creative Planning, and major broker-dealers like Cetera Financial Group) consistently saving independent advisors more than 10 hours per week by automating complex administrative and compliance workflows.

Rather than generating long, text-heavy meeting summaries that still require manual filtering, Zocks listens to client conversations and automatically maps up to 370+ financial data fields natively into downstream systems like wealth planning software and CRMs. 

This award comes during a period of explosive enterprise growth for Zocks, highlighted by a $45 million Series B funding round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and QED Investors, an 8x year-over-year revenue expansion, and a strategic investment from hybrid RIA platform RFG Advisory.

How were the winners selected? 

The WealthBriefing WealthTech Americas Awards program is engineered to showcase outstanding individuals, products, and services across the North American and Latin American family office and wealth management sectors. The WealthBriefing evaluation process is heavily formalized, requiring detailed quantitative and qualitative evidence of market disruption, tangible technological efficiency, and rigorous regulatory design.

The judging process is overseen by a prestigious, fully independent panel of wealth management leaders, including veteran operational executives like Vikram Chugh (COO of Robertson Stephens), Howard Geller (Principal at Hudson Peak Group), and Dr. Tania Neild (CTO of InfoGrate). In evaluating the "Innovator of the Year" category, the panel assesses nominees based on three rigid pillars:

• Market disruption & execution: The velocity of firm growth, successful enterprise implementations, and measurable product-market fit.
• Operational value & ROI: Peer-reviewed evidence that the innovation solves deep-seated industry bottlenecks, including compressing financial plan delivery timelines and reducing application processing delays.
• Compliance & security architecture: Ensuring that cutting-edge capabilities natively withstand the complex regulations governing high-net-worth data protection.

What does this mean for advisors evaluating AI tools? 

The pace of AI tools is moving incredibly quickly. It’s important to evaluate a tool's roadmap and make sure it aligns with your business goals, instead of simply evaluating based on the features you’re looking for today. This award is a strong indicator that Zocks will continue to be the standard for product innovation in the industry.

What does this mean for Zocks? 

As firms scale, the burden of data entry, account opening form-filling, and manual CRM updating limits an advisor’s ability to build deeper relationships. This award directly validates our roadmap and mission: to transition the industry from features like meeting summaries and automated note-taking into a fully functional AI assistant that automates admin work and enables advisors to spend the majority of their time where it matters: with their clients.