Fintake, a Cyprus-based broker technology startup founded by Ahmad Said, has launched Helio, a cloud-native trading platform aimed at CFD, OTC, and crypto brokers. The platform is positioned around an architectural distinction that Said highlights between systems adapted to the cloud and those designed from inception as cloud-native.
According to Said, Helio was built "from day one" as an active/active, multi-region infrastructure with no failover dependency, no single point of failure, and zero-downtime deployments as standard. He contrasts this with most trading platforms in the market, which he characterizes as being merely deployed in the cloud rather than natively architected for it.
Said brings experience from four years at Pepperstone, where he joined as the first engineering hire in Cyprus and built a team of more than 20 engineers. His work there included one of the first large-scale TradingView broker integrations, Pepperstone's proprietary trading platform, and its mobile app. By the time he left in 2024, he served as Head of Engineering for the EMEA region.
Live Chaos Testing and Regulatory Context
Fintake has adopted an unconventional sales approach for Helio. Instead of focusing on uptime statistics or service-level agreements, the company conducts live chaos testing in front of prospective clients. Said describes scenarios that include intentionally shutting down availability zones and entire regions to show how the platform behaves under stress, including during live trading sessions and mid-deployment.
This approach is both commercial and regulatory in nature. More than a year after the EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) came into force, many brokers are still working to meet its requirements. The regulation obliges firms to demonstrate, rather than only document, their ability to withstand information and communication technology disruptions.
Market Context and Competitive Landscape
Fintake is entering a trading platform market that in 2026 remains dominated by MT5, cTrader, and DXtrade. MT5 now runs on roughly 68% of global brokerages and surpassed MT4 in trading volume in the first quarter of 2025, ending nearly two decades of MT4 dominance. Alternative platforms such as cTrader, DXtrade, and Match-Trader collectively increased their market share to around 27% by the same period.
With a growing share of CFD brokers exploring multi-asset and futures pivots under regulatory pressure and competition from the United States, existing infrastructure choices are under closer scrutiny. Fintake is seeking to position Helio as an option for brokers reassessing their technology stacks in this environment.
Roadmap and Social Trading Integration
One of the more closely watched elements of Fintake's roadmap is an unannounced social trading partnership that is currently in final testing. Said describes it as a "major global ecosystem" designed to support client acquisition and engagement for brokers using Helio, emphasizing that the integration is deep and native rather than a superficial widget layer.
The broader product roadmap includes crypto spot trading, on-chain liquidity access, and updated web and mobile interfaces. These features are planned as native extensions of Helio's multi-asset framework rather than separate product lines, aligning with the platform's focus on a unified, cloud-native architecture.
