Can AI be a better portfolio manager than you? Why Ulys CEO Hugo Renaudin is betting on Yes

Ulys CEO Says Users Own the Call on AI-Built Portfolios as App Opens to Public

Ulys, an AI investing app that builds baskets of crypto and tokenized stocks from a user's written thesis, opened to the public on Apple's App Store on Nov. 10. CEO Hugo Renaudin told The Defiant that responsibility for each trade sits with the user.

"At the end of the day, it's always the user making that decision," Renaudin said in an interview with The Defiant founder Camila Russo. "So it's their responsibility." He added that Ulys has a responsibility to make sure its AI gives the right recommendation.

Ulys's terms of service, last updated Oct. 21, say the company is not a broker, dealer, exchange, investment adviser or fiduciary, and that AI output is not investment advice and can be wrong. The terms cap Ulys's total liability to a user at $100 and require disputes to go to individual arbitration.

How the app works

A user describes a view in plain language, such as a bet on data centers or DeFi. The app researches it and proposes a basket of assets, which the user can edit before buying. Ulys calls these baskets Ideas.

Renaudin described the product as "Phantom with an AI interface." The language models come from third-party labs. The terms name OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and users pick the model. Ulys pays for inference and does not charge for the AI features.

Renaudin said the company's edge is a harness and tooling that specialize those models for investing. "That's our secret sauce, is how we tailor the model," he said. The terms state that Ulys does not build or train the models.

Renaudin said Ulys makes money from a 1% fee. He described it as a fee on every transaction. The terms specify that the 1% applies to swaps, meaning buying, selling or converting assets, and that sending assets, the AI features and the app are currently free. Network and third-party routing fees are passed through in the quote.

Wallet runs on Privy

Ulys wallets run on Privy's embedded-wallet infrastructure. Users log in with an email or phone number and have no seed phrase. According to the terms, each wallet's private key is split into encrypted shares using Shamir's Secret Sharing and reassembled only inside a hardware-isolated trusted execution environment to sign a transaction. Ulys says it holds no share of the key. Users can export the key through Privy and move to wallets such as MetaMask or Phantom.

Renaudin said the wallet spans Bitcoin, Ethereum, Base, Solana and Robinhood Chain, with Hyperliquid and other chains planned by year-end. Tokenized stocks come from issuers on those chains; he named Robinhood, Coinbase, xStocks, Ondo and Dinari. Ulys's terms say the company does not select, review, list or endorse individual assets, and that tokenized assets may carry no rights in the underlying share.

Ulys does not run KYC itself, Renaudin said. Users who fund with a card or bank transfer go through the on-ramp provider's checks. The app uses App Store region and IP address to block assets that are restricted in a user's location, such as Robinhood's stock tokens for U.S. users, he said.

Approval for every trade, with exceptions

Renaudin said users sign every transaction and that the AI cannot execute trades on their behalf. "It's not like a YOLO mode," he said.

The terms describe exceptions. Smart Orders, which fire when a price or other trigger is hit, and Earn, which deposits idle USDC into an Aave vault and a Morpho vault on Base, run through a "Delegated Signer" that the user authorizes once. Privy enforces a policy that limits what that signer can do, and the user can revoke it. Transactions it carries out are treated as the user's own.

Asked about AI errors, Renaudin said the AI can propose the wrong asset or a basket that does not match the user's idea, and that Ulys relies on guardrails and testing to reduce that risk. He argued that an AI checking liquidity and contract addresses makes scam tokens less likely to slip through than with a manual wallet. The terms say Ulys's fraud tools are limited in scope and that the absence of a warning does not mean a token is safe.

Renaudin said Ulys relies on Privy for wallet security and runs internal audits of its own processes. He did not name an external audit firm.

Launch history and next steps

The Nov. 10 press release described Ulys as a private beta until that date. Ulys's own blog announced on July 19 that the app was live in the U.S. on iOS, with international expansion to follow by the end of July. The Nov. 10 version added the Ideas basket builder and tokenized stocks and ETFs.

Renaudin said Ulys is live in 111 countries, including the U.S. and most of South America, and aims for 160 by year-end. The app is not yet available in Europe or the United Kingdom. There is no cap on deposits.

On the roadmap, Renaudin said a new version of the AI is due in the coming weeks, prediction markets are planned before year-end and a debit card is likely in the first quarter of 2027. He said the longer-term plan includes payments, including AI agent payments.

Renaudin said Ulys is two and a half years old and has 11 employees, including CTO Dylan Bourgeois. The company is incorporated as Ulys Holdings, Inc. and is based in New York.

Ulys joins self-custodial wallets adding tokenized equities, including MetaMask, which integrated Ondo's tokenized stocks for non-U.S. users.