From neobank to tech powerhouse: The Understanding Company of Detroit

After losing their banking partner in 2024, Damon Kirk and Steven Farrar rebuilt their company into a platform that treats health data, ethical AI, and currency strategy as tools for closing the racial wealth gap.

Four years ago, I met Damon Kirk and Steven Farrar, when they were building Obsidian – a Black-focused neobank trying to close the racial wealth gap. Banking, investing, education, and community work.

That company no longer exists. Not in that form. What replaced it is called The Understanding Company, and it goes considerably further than a neobank ever could.

I recently got to reconnect with Steven and Damon to hear what's changed, where the company stands today, and what they're building toward.

The moment everything fell apart (and why they're glad it did)

In September 2024, the Banking-as-a-Service partner Obsidian had been relying on shut down its operations entirely.

For most startups, that's a fatal blow. Damon doesn't see it that way.

"It was a blessing in disguise," he said.

With no external partner to lean on, the team had no choice but to build everything themselves, and that turned out to be exactly what they needed. They rebuilt the entire product from the ground up, taking full ownership of their technology stack, and in the process were accepted into the NVIDIA Inception program and incubated at Harvard Innovation Labs` accelerator.

From physical doors to virtual doors

Before any of the technology came the fieldwork.

Steven and Damon ran a nationwide door-to-door outreach campaign (knocking on real doors, talking to real people) to understand what financial struggle actually looks like from the inside. The effort earned them the Spirit of Detroit award and a partnership with the Governor of Michigan on Black Financial Literacy Awareness Day.

What they found reshaped their entire approach.

Two things kept showing up as drivers of the racial wealth gap: short-term reactive spending (the kind of purchases people make when they're stressed, tired, or emotionally depleted) and longevity. That second one surprised them.

Steven is clear-eyed about the limits of knocking on doors. The grassroots campaign was essential for understanding what communities actually needed. It couldn't scale. So the company has shifted to a digital-first model (virtual doors, in their framing) designed to carry the same depth of engagement into a format that can reach far more people.

They're also extending their reach into the nonprofit sector, offering free accounts to organisations that serve homeless populations, children, and other vulnerable groups. Municipal partnerships are in development, with at least one significant city deal apparently close to being announced.

Vueni: the invisible app powered by ethical AI

The flagship product is called Vueni, and Damon describes it as "the invisible app."

The premise is simple: most financial technology tries to make you smarter by throwing more information at you. Vueni tries to actually understand your situation and give you guidance that's relevant to your life, your income, your neighbourhood, your habits. The experience is meant to feel less like using software and more like having a direct line to someone who genuinely knows what they're talking about. A bank CEO's personal phone number, as Damon puts it.

Users can connect their financial accounts and ask questions about their money, taxes, or spending - and get answers tailored to their actual circumstances.

The AI behind Vueni is built on models from Mistral AI, runs on NVIDIA's infrastructure, and sits in the cloud via Amazon and Microsoft. Importantly, the data it's trained on is ethically sourced, a deliberate choice to avoid the scraping practices that have drawn criticism across the industry.

The health-wealth loop

The wearable integration is where things get genuinely novel.

Because the team's research showed such a clear connection between physical health and financial outcomes, they built a system that reads data from wearable devices – sleep scores, resting heart rates, daily step counts – and uses that information as a signal for financial behaviour.

The idea: if someone hasn't slept properly, their spending decisions are likely to be worse. The platform can respond to that, restricting certain categories of spending, for instance, or surfacing a prompt that reconnects the user to a longer-term goal.

On the longevity side, the platform can track walking habits over time and connect consistent activity to projected improvements in life expectancy, which in turn tie back to retirement projections and wealth outcomes.

It's not a fitness app. It's a financial platform that understands your body affects your bank account.

Swiss Franc access: democratising currency diversification

One of the more unexpected features in The Understanding Company's product suite is access to Swiss franc accounts, historically a strategy used by wealthy investors to protect against dollar inflation.
The math: the Swiss franc has historically outpaced USD inflation by approximately 3% annually. Over 30 years, that compounds into a 40–45% reduction in inflation's bite. Add a 4% yield on top, and you're looking at returns that can compare to S&P 500 performance – without changing your spending habits or picking up a new debit card.

This is made possible through a partnership with AllUnity. The philosophy behind offering it is consistent with everything else the company builds: stop asking people to change how they live and instead build tools that produce better outcomes from within their existing behaviour.

The man who wired them USD 10,000

The interview ended with a story that's worth telling in full.

Dave Mayo spent years championing community banking through the Banking-as-a-Service Association and FedFis. He watched one of Damon and Steven's early interviews online, then wired them USD 10,000. No equity ask. No strings attached. Just a message: keep fighting – and jokingly said, make me famous.

Dave Mayo is no longer with us, but he was the kind of person who shows up before everyone else does. That kind of faith is exactly what The Understanding Company was built on.

Looking ahead

At its core, The Understanding Company is building technology for people who have been overlooked by every other financial product on the market. People with real lives, real stress, and real bodies that get tired. Communities that have been locked out of wealth-building for generations.

They're not here to claim they solved the racial wealth gap with an app. They know it's bigger than that. But they're chipping away at it in a way that meets people where they are, not where the system wishes they were.

The Swiss franc access, the wearable integration, and the AI guidance. Whether all of it adds up to something truly transformative is something only time will answer. What's already true is that Damon and Steven lost everything, rebuilt from nothing, and came out the other side with a clearer vision than most companies ever find.

What started as Obsidian is now something much harder to put in a box, and that's the point. They connected health to wealth, built AI that actually understands context, and opened up financial strategies that used to be reserved for people who already had money. The technology doesn't just serve you. It gets you.

As they expand into cities, nonprofits, and new tech partnerships, one thing is clear. Damon Kirk and Steven Farrar are not ONLY building for the future of finance. They're building for the people finance forgot.

The site and products will go live on 16 June 2026 at theunderstanding.company. To learn more about how Steven and Damon’s mission is evolving, read here: https://tuc-site.vercel.app/writing/evolving-our-mission

About Steven and Damon

Damon Kirk, CEO & Founder, is a 32-year-old Air Force veteran and the youngest ever Airman's Council VP at Schriever Space Force Base at the age of 21. After a stint of homelessness, the VA offered the opportunity to attend the University of Michigan, Harvard, and over two dozen Dale Carnegie courses. Considered for World’s Top Financial Influencer by Benzinga in 2022 for his work in financially educating Detroiters. He was also a member of Intel's Global Banking Think Tank, a recipient of the Spirit of Detroit Award, and a Legislative Tribute from the Michigan State House of Representatives for his work in closing the racial wealth gap. 
 

 

 

Steven Farrar, Co-Founder and CFO, is a grassroots community leader in Detroit, committed to socioeconomic equity in all of his work. As a finance professional, Steven has a proven track record, having managed over USD 1 billion in assets throughout his career. Fighting on the front lines for literacy in Michigan, he’s also put 15,000 books directly into the hands of inner city youth as Founder & CEO of Linking Literature, also amassing a viewership of 16,000+ in 147 countries through their online writing platform. At 33 years old, he’s made a hands-on impact on youth in Detroit through meaningful programming and partnerships. As co-founder of The Understanding Company, he’s shifted his focus to promoting longevity, health, and financial wellness for Black Americans.
 

 

About The Understanding Company

The Understanding Company integrates its proprietary Augmented Understanding (Au) technology into human and enterprise systems to maximise efficiency and generate positive outcomes. Led by its flagship banking product, Vueni, a next-gen neobanking experience that creates actionable insights for its users by correlating biometric data with financial behaviour. A first-to-market platform that quantifies the relationship between stress and spending volatility, providing evidence-based behavioural nudges to optimise both health and wealth outcomes.

For more info: https://tuc-site.vercel.app/about