Ryan Nelson, who founded Alchemy Wealth Management in 2021 as an independent, fee-only fiduciary practice in Reno, Nevada, is a rare kind of AI innovator: a practicing fiduciary advisor who personally designs and builds the technology his firm runs on. A former mechanical and process engineer, he spent the past year and a half, with no technology staff and no outside funding, architecting an AI operating layer for his two-person RIA that automates meeting follow-up, surfaces firm data in real time, and sustains a multi-channel education program, freeing hundreds of hours a year to put back into client work. What sets him apart is ownership and restraint. He builds integrated internal tools rather than buying point solutions or pasting client data into public chatbots, and he built the guardrails first, so a human reviews every output and AI never touches an investment or fiduciary decision.