# Alexandre Elkrief

> Alexandre Elkrief is the co-founder and co-CEO of August Digital and a co-founder of Upshift. He previously led DeFi at LedgerPrime and co-founded Knowhere, a machine-learning-driven news company. His work spans financial infrastructure, quantitative methods and tools for making complex information usable.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & Co-CEO at August Digital; Co-Founder at Upshift
- **Organizations:** August Digital, Upshift, LedgerPrime, Knowhere
- **Education:** BSc in Mathematics, Imperial College London, MS in Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Stanford University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Knowhere, which had an audience of 540,000 and more than $7 million in funding by the end of 2020., Co-founded Fractal/August, which announced $6 million seed financing in April 2023 and $10 million Series A financing in March 2025., August reported more than $7 billion in monthly transaction volume and more than $400 million in loans originated over the prior year in March 2025.

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Co-founded Knowhere; co-authored a Stanford CS229 project on machine learning and bank analyst recommendations.
- **2018** — Discussed Knowhere’s approach to machine learning and journalism as its president and co-founder.
- **Before 2023** — Led DeFi at LedgerPrime.
- **2023** — Fractal, co-founded with Aya Kantorovich, announced a $6 million seed round led by Hack VC.
- **2025** — August, formerly Fractal, announced a $10 million Series A led by Dragonfly; Upshift emerged from stealth with Elkrief identified as CEO.
- **2026** — Upshift announced institutional partnerships with Securitize Fund Services and Kraken Institutional.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Knowhere, which had an audience of 540,000 and more than $7 million in funding by the end of 2020.
- Co-founded Fractal/August, which announced $6 million seed financing in April 2023 and $10 million Series A financing in March 2025.
- August reported more than $7 billion in monthly transaction volume and more than $400 million in loans originated over the prior year in March 2025.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Kraken Institutional announced a partnership with Upshift for custom institutional vaults accessible through qualified custody.
- **2026-04** — Securitize Fund Services announced an Upshift partnership for independent reporting, allocation tracking and reconciliation.
- **2025-04** — Upshift emerged from stealth; Elkrief was identified as its CEO in launch coverage.

## Links

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandreelkrief
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/AElkrief

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/alexandre-elkrief
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-21