Strategic Acquisition Brief · Confidential
MaxiFi does economics-based planning with a patent-winning deterministic algorithm that is verifiably correct at a glance — built over 30 years by BU economist Laurence Kotlikoff, taught with at MIT Sloan by Nobel laureate Robert Merton. Train it into Gemini's weights or deploy it as a back-end verifier: computed, reproducible answers Google can stand behind — and, because the math is exact, guarantee. The antidote is not a better disclaimer; it is a computed answer.
The growth case →Request the briefingA European court has ruled that an AI Overview is Google's own speech — not neutral aggregation — and rejected the argument that users are responsible for fact-checking it (LG Munich I, May 28, 2026: preliminary injunction, up to €250,000 per violation; Google is appealing — cited here as a live landmark, not a final judgment). On the one domain where a confidently wrong answer does lasting financial harm — how much can I safely spend, and how do I make it last? — the defense Google currently relies on is a disclaimer. That is precisely the defense the court struck down. Meanwhile AI Mode crossed 1B+ monthly users with finance a declared agentic vertical, and Google Finance's rebuild researches markets — but no Google surface computes a household's lifetime plan.
Every large language model estimates; a model trained on text produces a plausible figure and states it with confidence. Only a deterministic optimization engine — solving the household's taxes, Social Security timing, and longevity simultaneously — returns the figure that is correct by construction. MaxiFi solves the lifetime plan for a household's facts and assumptions: every dollar computed under current law, same inputs, same answer, every time, auditable at a glance.
That changes what the claim is. Backed by the pedigree — thirty years of Laurence Kotlikoff's economics, taught with at MIT Sloan by Nobel laureate Robert Merton — and by the reproducible computations themselves, the accuracy claim stops being puffery and becomes a substantiated statement of fact. And determinism unlocks what a claim alone never could: a bounded Accuracy Guarantee with a defined remedy — the play that built TurboTax's franchise, never before available in planning, insurable only because the math is exact.
The substantiation regime that polices financial advertising — FINRA 2210's fair-and-not-misleading standard, FTC substantiation doctrine — protects this claim. Rivals can run vague accuracy language; what they cannot run is your claim: the specific, falsifiable, guaranteed one. Copying it without the engine is a false claim regulators, NAD panels, and Lanham Act suits will punish.
The AI that provably gets money right — the claim no rival lab or search engine can lawfully copy, on the query category where trust decides the default.
Perturb the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances into billions of households, run each through MaxiFi, train on verified pairs — the economics lives in Gemini's weights; the engine remains the verifier that keeps answers warrantable.
Determinism makes a bounded Accuracy Guarantee underwritable — the TurboTax play, at Google scale, impossible on a probabilistic engine.
The declared finance vertical ships with computed, auditable answers instead of estimates — the correctness layer and the liability shield in one engine.
| Google Finance (research) | Gemini app (estimate) | Gemini + MaxiFi (compute) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The money answer | Cited market research | Plausible figures; varies run to run | One correct, reproducible, auditable answer |
| The question answered | What is happening in markets? | How much might I need? | The most I can safely spend with what I have |
| Can it be warranted? | No | No | Yes — the guarantee only exact math can carry |
One quarter of the computed answer behind the finance vertical answers what no forecast can. Owning MaxiFi is the exclusive right to run that play — and to deny it to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta permanently. It is a revenue line, not a legal reserve.
MaxiFi (Economic Security Planning, Inc.) uses consumption smoothing and dynamic programming to compute the single, mathematically optimal lifetime plan — solving simultaneously across Social Security strategy, federal and state taxes, Roth-conversion sequencing, withdrawal order, insurance sizing, and upside investing. For a household's facts and assumptions it solves — not guesses: same inputs, same answer, every time, with an audit trail.
Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff — William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University; Harvard Ph.D.; former Senior Economist, President's Council of Economic Advisers; named by The Economist among the 25 most influential economists.
Taught with at MIT Sloan by Nobel laureate Robert Merton as an “outstanding science-based lifecycle and retirement management platform” (Merton does not endorse products); featured in Bankrate's “Best financial planning software of 2025” roundup. The economics trace to Nobel-recognized lifecycle work.
Patented algorithms and thirty years of continuously maintained federal/state tax, Social Security, and benefit rules with a validation record — exactly the IP a language model cannot reverse-engineer and a build team cannot shortcut.
Larry Kotlikoff intends to stay on with the acquirer — to integrate the engine, validate the training and guarantee programs, and continue as spokesperson. The acquirer buys the engine and keeps the economist who built it.
The training data is public (the Survey of Consumer Finances) and the compute is in-house — no separate runtime layer, no new compute line item. Kotlikoff has published the method; owning the engine and its founder is the train-the-model path, with MaxiFi as the runtime verifier that makes every answer reproducible. Larry stays on to integrate, validate the training program, and continue as spokesperson.
The Munich theory travels: if the AI answer is the platform's own speech, the users-must-fact-check defense is foreclosed. Applied to consumer finance at 1B+ users, any systematic planning error becomes a population-scale liability a disclaimer cannot reach — and in the U.S., the Wolf River Electric suit shows the exposure already has a price tag. The response is cybersecurity-style, not legal-style: a computed, verifiable, reproducible answer that cannot hallucinate the lifetime math, with the disclosure-and-attestation architecture built in.
And the engine ships with the architecture that keeps the floor solid under an advertised claim: assumptions and law-table version disclosed on every output, customer input attestation, versioned rule tables with re-run notices on law changes, and the Accuracy Guarantee's defined remedy. The audit trail proves each customer was told exactly what was — and wasn't — promised.
We price the asset on the growth case above. The defense beneath it is a term of the deal, not the deal — and, like the claim itself, it is denied to every competitor the day it is yours.
A frontier model's retirement “smile” ran 13% too low in each of a real household's 40 remaining years against MaxiFi's computed path — dated, dollar-specific, reproducible.
Four frontier AIs sized the same father's coverage at $1.3M, $1.4M, and $3.8M — against MaxiFi's internally consistent $2.09M. Every shortcut the AIs used is programmable — and wrong.
One retirement question, three frontier engines, three different verdicts — with MIT's Andrew Lo noting these tools carry no best-interest duty. The category estimates; the divergence is the proof.
The tests publish to 145,000+ subscribers and counting — credibility no rival in the category can match, and it conveys with the acquisition.
MaxiFi is offered for acquisition through a focused strategic process — the engine, its IP, and thirty years of R&D. We are deliberate about where it lands: the surface where the correct answer reaches the most real people. For Google the integration is short, the data is public, and the payoff — the named-threat antidote, the missing primitive, and the denial — is immediate.
The next step: a 30-minute briefing — MaxiFi solves a real household's lifetime plan, live, while a frontier model is asked to match it. The gap is the thesis; the funnel is the price.
Michael Kane, Ph.D., J.D. · Managing Partner, Kane & Company · FINRA / SEC / SIPC–Registered Investment Bank
Commerce@kaneco.com · 310-441-5263 · Representing Economic Security Planning, Inc.