There is a certain something in watching a company take on a trillion-dollar problem with the swagger of a garage-born startup and the execution of a public-market veteran. Human Interest was founded in 2015 by Roger Lee and Paul Sawaya with one mission: make retirement plans something every small and medium-sized business can actually afford, understand, and offer without losing their minds in paperwork. It sounds simple until you remember the old 401(k) world was basically a toll booth manned by legacy providers who billed like it was 1987.
Fast forward a decade. The San Francisco-based fintech has grown into one of the fastest-growing 401(k) and 403(b) providers in the country, serving over 35,000 businesses and helping nearly three million employees save for retirement. They’ve removed transaction fees, automated compliance, integrated with 500-plus payroll providers, and somehow made IRS testing feel less like a tax season panic attack. In 2024 alone, they saved customers and employees $24.6 million in fees and captured one in four of all new 401(k) plans in the U.S.
Now, the plot thickens. On August 4, 2025, Human Interest announced that Morgan Stanley Tactical Value will invest up to $50 million in the company. It is technically part of their $267 million Series E round from July 2024 that valued the company at $1.33 billion, but the timing here matters. It signals that even a year later, one of the most sophisticated investment platforms on Wall Street still sees upside in the mission. This is the same Series E that brought in Marshall Wace, Baillie Gifford, and BlackRock. In total, Human Interest has raised more than $700 million across its funding history.
CEO Jeff Schneble, who joined as a board member in 2017 before taking the helm in 2019, has been steering this ship toward scale without losing sight of the original goal. Co-founder Roger Lee remains on the board, while co-founder and former CTO Paul Sawaya still advises. The leadership has been quietly building for IPO-readiness: adding public-company veterans, strengthening compliance, and doubling down on products like PartnerConnect, a platform for financial advisors that took over 50,000 engineering hours to build and is already onboarding hundreds of firms.
What this investment buys is more than engineering hours. It buys acceleration. PartnerConnect is set for an enhanced release this year. It deepens their reach into hourly-worker markets still largely ignored by legacy providers. It tightens the company’s grip on a sector that, thanks to SECURE Act 2.0 and state-level mandates, is about to tip.
The retirement gap in America is estimated at $3.68 trillion. That is the market. Human Interest is not just chasing it. They’re building the road to it. And they just convinced Morgan Stanley to pave another stretch.
