Financial Engines Inc. is a Palo Alto-based company providing personalized retirement planning. The company, which went public in March 2010 (Nasdaq: FNGN), has $34 billion under management and works with more than 750 large employers and 401(k) providers. Financial Engines has about 300 employees and reported revenues of $112 million last year, up from $85 million in 2009.
The company was founded in 1996 as the brainchild of William Sharpe, co-winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in economic sciences for his theories of financial economics, including work on how the prices of financial assets are determined and the link between risk and return. Sharpe co-founded the firm with former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission member and Stanford Law School professor Joseph Grundfest and the late Craig Johnson, then chairman of the Venture Law Group.
