Tom Ruggie sits down with James Burton of InvestmentNews to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing wealth management and how he's putting it to work at Destiny Family Office. Tom shares the thinking behind Destiny Intelligence and Destiny Access, including how AI is being used to support advisors and provide qualified purchasers with private market information. The conversation also explores late-stage pre-IPO investing, Tom's perspective on the current market cycle, and the parallels he sees with the dot-com era.
Following his back-to-back 2025 and 2026 InvestmentNews Advisor of the Year wins for Alternative Investments, Tom Ruggie, founder and CEO of Destiny Family Office, sits down with James Burton of InvestmentNews to discuss what's next for wealth management and why continuous improvement remains central to his approach.
Tom shares how a client's experience with artificial intelligence helped inspire Destiny Intelligence, how his firm is applying AI to advisor workflows and private investment research, and the story behind "mini Tom," an AI agent built using 35 years of his professional experience. He also discusses Destiny Access, a private-market platform developed for qualified purchasers, his perspective on late-stage pre-IPO investing and the current market cycle, and the parallels he sees between today's AI enthusiasm and the dot-com era.
► LINKS & RESOURCES
Significance of Wealth Podcast: https://significance-of-wealth.simplecast.com/
Destiny Family Office: https://destinyfamilyoffice.com
Follow Tom Ruggie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomruggie/
Award Recognition Details: https://destinyfamilyoffice.com/recognitions-disclosure
► ABOUT SIGNIFICANCE OF WEALTH PODCAST
Hosted by Tom Ruggie, ChFC®, CFP®, Significance of Wealth explores the evolving landscape of wealth management, private investments, and collectibles as both a passion and alternative asset class.
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Martie Salt: Welcome to the Significance of Wealth Podcast, where we explore the evolving landscape of wealth management, private investments, and collectibles as both a passion and alternative asset class. I'm Martie Salt. For today's episode, we're sharing an interview Tom Ruggie recorded over the summer with James Burton, vice president of editorial at InvestmentNews.
The conversation followed Tom's recognition as the 2026 InvestmentNews Advisor of the Year for alternative investments, his second consecutive year receiving the award. They discussed two projects at Destiny. The first is Destiny Access, an intelligence-rich destination built exclusively for qualified purchasers.
It is a platform in the truest sense designed to bring private market opportunities, proprietary insights, and curated investment intelligence together in one place for eligible investors. The second is Destiny Intelligence, an AI innovation company Tom has created to transform his own wealth management organization, enhance client relationships, and eventually bring AI capabilities at a very high level to other independent advisory firms.
The conversation also explores why there's currently so much excitement surrounding private, late-stage, pre-IPO investments, why Tom sees similarities between today's AI boom and what occurred during the dot-com era, and how his lifelong commitment to never being complacent has earned him recognition within the financial industry as a leader, innovator, and change-maker.
Here's Tom Ruggie in conversation with James Burton of InvestmentNews.
James Burton: Hi, everyone. My name is James Burton from InvestmentNews. Thanks so much for joining us today. I'm delighted to be joined by Tom Ruggie, founder and CEO of Destiny Family Office. Tom, thanks for joining us.
Tom Ruggie: James, thanks for having me.
It's always a, a pleasure to connect with you.
James Burton: Congratulations, of course, being named a 2026 InvestmentNews Advisor of the Year for alternative investments. Um, yeah, great achievement, Tom, and, and well done. I hope you enjoy that night. Um, we're gonna use this opportunity to dive into a couple new features that you're bringing to your company and exploring, um, Destiny Access and Destiny Intelligence.
First of all, Tom, just give us a, a, a quick, a quick, uh, recap on what they are.
Tom Ruggie: Okay. Well, well, first I want to say, uh, thank you for, um, mentioning the award. It was, it was quite an honor. Um, uh, yeah, we did this interview a year ago and, uh, on, on the cusp of, of me winning the award in 2025, and I mentioned to you that we're already, you know, putting groundwork in to, uh, you know, a- with a goal of winning the award again in 2026.
And so now I'm gonna put that stake in the ground again that, you know, the goal is to three-peat or l- or at least to, uh, to be one of the finalists. And, and again, you know, we're, we're gonna be talking about some of the things that we're doing that hopefully puts us in the running, so appreciate that. Um, broadly speaking, Destiny Intelligence is, is really our AI platform and, uh, I can go into more detail about it, but, um, we, we hired a, a, a, a gentleman that was leading AI innovation for Amazon and feel pretty fortunate to, uh, you know, to be able to get somebody of that quality and caliber to, to join our team and, and build out our AI platform.
And then Destiny Access, you know, as we've talked before, we, we've been very, very heavy in the, um, uh, primarily late IPO, late stage pre-IPO companies, uh, direct investment private companies. So, uh, Destiny Access really has been built to be a, a destination portal for those that are participating in not only the direct investments, but also, um, you know, the alternative investments that are a pretty big portion of, of our business
James Burton: Just staying on, on Destiny, uh, Access there then, Tom, what, what gap in the market do you think that fills?
Who... How are you ahead of the game there?
Tom Ruggie: Yeah. It, I think the, the gap in the market is the, the coordination of what a client is investing in and gaining access to information on those investments. So, um, you know, a- again, my, my goal of Destiny Access really is like I used the word destination. I want it to be a destination point.
So, you know, James, if, if you were a client, you'd be able to go onto the portal, not only pull up information about your holdings, but have the ability to say, "Hey, I, I want to receive any publicly available information live as it comes." So we're using AI to feed that information into it. So, you know, hypothetically, if you have four holdings, um, Anthropic, Crusoe, SpaceX, which of course has gone public, but we're still tracking that, um, and OpenAI.
Uh, and, and maybe a couple of those you've even, even participated multiple times. So you'll be able to go onto it, click on your account, see, you know, when you purchased the assets, what the purchase price was for the assets, what the current valuation is for those companies for every single position that, that you've purchased.
Then we have tiles set up that you can go into the SpaceX tile, and it's going to feed information to you and, and you're gonna have the ability to really cater exactly what you're looking for or what your benefits are. And, and we're also using AI, you know, kind of the Amazon, the, the site, where it's going to be able to track what's of interest to you.
And our goal is to be able to constantly feed you what, y- you know, what's appealing to you, what you wanna see when you go onto the site
James Burton: But you're leaning heavily into AI there, Tom. It's obviously- Yeah ... exploding. Um, so Destiny Intelligence then, what-- I mean, how heavily have you led into AI- AI? What features is that gonna offer to advisors?
I'm, I'm curious 'cause I know it's an area that you've done a lot of research on.
Tom Ruggie: Yes. It, it, it is, and, you know, the, the great thing about the stage of the business that, that I'm in is, is, uh, you know, I have a lot of resources, I have a lot of great clients. The, the thought process for us to actually focus on AI was really, uh, an initiative led by a client of mine and, and seeing directly what he was able to do with AI with his business.
And, you know, candidly, James, I, I, I think had it not been for that real time development of how important AI was, was playing in, in my client's firm, I, I, I think I probably would've been like the majority of the, the RIAs out in the country. You know, my, my, my feeling is is that if, if you were to poll financial advisors, that 90% of them are gonna say that, that they're utilizing AI.
But the difference between utilizing it and really capitalizing on it is significantly different. And so, you know, when we made the determination that, that we wanted to be a leader in the AI space and, and kind of get ahead of, of the curve or b- you know, ride that wave, that's when we really started looking to see what kind of talent that we could, we could bring on.
And, and again, to bring on the, the caliber of a talent that we were able to bring on has been fantastic. So, you know, we're, we're just over three months into this. Um, you know, we're... The, the, the ultimate goal is for Destiny Intelligence to be a, a, a place where other RIAs can go and effectively utilize the, the core competency, competencies that we've built up in the AI space for their business.
And, and of course to me there's no better way to do that than, than to beta test everything that we're doing with us. And so again, happy to share with you, you know, w- what we've done so far and, and, and what else is coming down the road from, from that standpoint.
James Burton: Correct me if I'm wrong, that seems like an interesting pivot for you, Tom, in that you're catering to the industry rather than clients.
So what, what sort of prompted, what prompted that, that sort of move? Just AI's capabilities?
Tom Ruggie: Well, I, I, I, as I, as I mentioned, I think that there's a big missing link for a lot of advisors, and I felt like this-- what we're doing, I feel, has significant potential to be scalable. And, and more importantly to me, um, you know, I, I'm the one that's utilizing the AI, but I'm not the one that's going to be leading Destiny Intelligence.
So, um, it, it's going to be, you know, what I would call a self-managing company that a-a-again, is, is utilizing our firm to beta test everything that we're doing and, and, you know, as you know from, from past conversations, you know, never content, never, never 100% happy, always trying to get better, and we're gonna continue to do that within the AI world, but make that offering available to other advisors.
I, I think there's-- I think it's a unique opportunity and, and such an amazing space and, you know, I'm, I'm pulling these numbers out of the air, James, but I would, I would bet that less than 10% of RIAs are truly using AI to the capacity that is going to have a meaningful benefit to their business. And, and I've already seen just significant time savings for me in, in two ways.
You know, the first time savings is actual time savings where, where AI is, is literally giving me more hours in the day. But the second, and, and possibly even i-more important, is I've been able to utilize AI where it's not necessarily saving time, but it's doing things that I would not have had the time or taken the time to do on my own.
So, for example, you know, we do a lot of, of direct investments, private company investments, and, you know, the analysis that it takes to vet the, the opportunities that cross our path, um, you-- it, it, it's very time-consuming. And so, you know, with AI and, and with what we've been able to develop from a standpoint of, of what we're looking for, what the roadmap looks for from a vetting process, I, I've been able to do significantly more vetting on the opportunities that we're looking at than we've ever been able to do.
And so it's, it's added additional benefits that ultimately, you know, trickle down to a, a benefit to our clients. But again, bigger picture, I think that, that this could be a, a huge benefit to other advisors that are not fully utilizing AI to the, you know, to the full strengths that is, is available for them
James Burton: This is a follow-up that you, you sort of talked about the research.
Wet my appetite a little bit. Give me a, a... What, what, what's the coolest feature about Destiny Intelligence that you're looking, looking forward to kinda rolling out the most?
Tom Ruggie: I, I, I don't know if I'd call this the coolest feature, but, you know, you hear a lot about agents. And, and so that was one of the first things that we did, was, was we built an agent.
Uh, and, and internally we call it a mini Tom. And, you know, the purpose of it at this point is, is not meant to be client-facing, although that does change a little bit with Destiny Access, which, which I'll go over with you. But, you know, the purpose at, at this point initially was to... What we did was we gathered effectively all the intelligence that could be found about me, including our interviews, including all my podcasts, including things I've written, articles I've written.
I mean, it, it, it really took 35 years of information and ultimately was downloaded into AI. And then the, the cool thing was, then Sean, whi- which is the A- my AI person, he, he goes to AI and says, "Okay, we have all this information about Tom Ruggie. Now go through the information and come up with questions that still need to be asked."
And so AI spit out about another 40 questions, and I spent about six hours being interviewed about myself and what I would do and how I would do things. But what ultimately came out of that, James, is, you know, i- initially at least my perception, I think Sean had a bigger vision because, you know, I, I... He's, he's a lot smarter than I am when it comes to this.
But my initial vision was, "Hey, we're gonna use this, this agent of me to help answer questions that my team," which, you know, our team is around 30 people. "So we're gonna help answer questions before it gets to me." So now if somebody puts something together and they want me to view it, they run it through my agent first and say, "Hey, what would Tom say about this?"
And it spits back information, recommendations, then they update it, then they get it to me. And what I found is a- as a generality, not only are the answers, you know, right on cue with what I would give, but candidly they, they probably even sound better than, than what I would give. And so that's, that's what we initially accomplished out of that.
But where the real win for me has been, and, and again, I didn't really know this was going to be a win until it took place, but the real win has been to ask myself the questions So, you know, you could send me an email and, and say, "Hey, Tom, you know, what do you think about what's going on with the war? How does that impact my portfolio," et cetera.
And, you know, typically what, what I do with an email like that is I spend 20 or 30 minutes, you know, creating what I want to give, which is a well-thought-out response And, and, and I still wanna do that. Just the difference is if I get that question two months down the road, I've already previously answered it, but I don't recall who I answered it.
And, and, you know, one thing Sean says about AI is, is it gives you photographic memory. And, and so now I can feed that same question into the database that effectively already has my answer, and, and within seconds I'm able to have a reply, review it, make any adjustments, and, and get it back out. So that's where the time savings has come in.
But again, I, I didn't actually realize initially that there was going to be significant time savings for me asking my own agent what I would do.
James Burton: Um, the future's kind of wild. Uh, so yeah, look, look forward to hearing more about that, our own agents and avatars and things. Um, switching gears slightly, Tom, I wanna get your thoughts on the private investment, um, space.
Um, and I know this is an area of, you know, a, a huge amount about. But where are we in your view with late-stage pre-IPO private investment? Are we at an inflection point?
Tom Ruggie: I, I don't think we're at the inflection point yet. Uh, but it, it, and we may be, but if, if we're not, we're very close. Um, you know, the, the, the biggest names in the industry, um, you know, are, are probably going to be going public within the next six months or so.
And, you know, I've, I've said this before and, and, and I stand by it. I think we have a, a period of time where, uh, AI-related investments are going to go gangbusters, and especially when a lot of these companies hit the public market such as Anthropic and, and OpenAI. And, you know, what I anticipate having is, is a, a feeding frenzy where, you know, everybody has kind of the fear of missing out and, and you, you know, you get that euphoric optimism and the e- everybody's trying to invest.
And, and, you know, in my opinion, James, what's gonna happen is, is a bubble is going to be created. Some people think we're in one right now. I, I personally don't, but, but I do, I clearly believe that is going to happen. I, I, I think we're gonna have a similar, um, similar reaction to what we had when, when the internet boom happened.
You know, again, the internet boom with hockey, hockey stick, everything went up and then, um, you know, u- unfortunately, um, at, at, at some point that bubble just bursts and there's a big adjustment. You know, the, the great thing about A lot of these companies is, is I believe we're investing in, you know, the, the Microsoft and the Apple and the Amazon of tomorrow.
Um, you know, the, the, the, the big companies are, in my opinion, are, are here to stay, and they're going to do very, very well. But, you know, there, there's, there's going to be, um, a period, a day, a day of reckoning where some of these are not as attractive. Uh, we are seeing from a, a standpoint of what's available from the private investment side, you know, our, our pipeline isn't near as robust as what it was a year ago.
And, uh, again, to me, that's the-- that, that we're coming towards the end of that cycle, but I don't think we're quite there yet
James Burton: Interesting. Well, just, uh, going back to your award, Tom. Again, many congratulations. Um, I mean, a pretty s- straightforward question. You had done... You've gone back to back. What, what, what's your secret sauce?
Tom Ruggie: Uh, w- I think the biggest secret sauce is, you know, the, the no complacency and always trying to get better. And, uh, you know, as, as I've already mentioned, when I won the award last year, I literally came home, you know, the first day in the office, got my team together, and I said, "What are we gonna do to put ourself in a position to win this award again?"
And, and we did an awful lot. And, um, you know, winning the award this year, I had my entire team with me, so literally as we're celebrating that night, that was the topic of conversation, is what are we going to do? And, and, and the reality, James, is, is what are, what are we gonna enhance that we're already doing to put ourself in a position to win again?
Because Destiny Access was already in the works. Um, you know, as this is being taped, Destiny Access was, uh, released for beta testing yesterday. We, we have 10 of our clients that are gonna take about a week and go through it, and give us thoughts on, on how to make it better. But, you know, that's, that's a, a very big initiative for us.
And, you know, thus far, um, in, in interviewing clients for what we're doing, the response has been, "Tom, you're building something that I have never seen out there. And if, if you can, you know, bring this to fruition, you're gonna have something that, that, you know, clearly separates what you're doing from the rest."
And, and James, that, that's, that's my goal. And, and that's always my goal. Uh, if, if I'm fortunate enough even to be in consideration for, for the three-peat, uh, I'm, I'm gonna have to really put my thinking cap on as to, as to what we do beyond that. But I'll, I'll worry about that a year from now.
James Burton: Good stuff.
Well, Tom, listen, congratulations again. Thanks for joining us. It's always fascinating to, to chat.
Tom Ruggie: Well, James, uh, thank you again. Always great seeing you, and, uh, I appreciate all that you and the InvestmentNews team do, you know, not only for us, but certainly for our, our industry, so thank you.
Martie Salt: That brings us to the end of today's episode.
Thank you for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe to Significance of Wealth on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts, so you never miss an episode. You can also follow Tom Ruggie and Destiny Family Office on LinkedIn and destinyfamilyoffice.com for more insights on wealth management, private market opportunities, and collectibles.
Until next time.
Disclosure: The expressed views, thoughts, and opinions belong solely to the host and/or guests and are not investment recommendations or opinions issued by Destiny Family Office or its affiliates. Investment advisory services are offered through Destiny Family Office LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor.
Destiny Family Office podcasts are the sole property of Destiny Family Office, and information provided is for informational and educational purposes only. Learn more at destinyfamilyoffice.com/disclosures.
Recognition Disclosure: Thomas Ruggie was named the 2026 InvestmentNews Advisor of the Year, Alternative Investments.
InvestmentNews is an unaffiliated third party. There was no fee to submit a nomination. Winners were selected by an independent panel of industry judges using a points-based voting system. This recognition is not indicative of future investment performance and should not be construed as an endorsement by any client.
For more information, including award methodology, please visit destinyfamilyoffice.com/recognitions-disclosure.