RSM Awards 2025 NextWave Champion, Showcasing AI-Enabled Transformation for The Middle Market

CHICAGO – December 18, 2025— RSM US LLP (“RSM”) – the leading provider of assurance, tax and consulting services for the middle market – today announced the winner of its 2025 NextWave innovation program, RSM’s annual global initiative that empowers employees to design technology-driven solutions addressing client and firm challenges.

This year’s champion, Aurora, an AI-powered advisory platform, was recognized for its innovative approach to advisory, unifying advanced data analysis with configurable heuristics and templates to dramatically improve speed, accuracy, scalability and team collaboration.

The winning solution stood out among more than 165 submissions from teams across the U.S., Canada, El Salvador and India for its creativity, boldness and potential to deliver measurable AI impact for clients and professionals.

“Building on this year’s theme—The NextWave of Service: Intelligent, Intuitive, AI-enabled—we continue to advance RSM's journey as a digital first firm,” said Sergio de la Fe, enterprise digital leader and partner at RSM US LLP. “Our commitment to integrating AI and automation into service delivery models enhances decision-making, streamlines processes and optimizes operations.”

“We’re excited to be recognized as the 2025 RSM NextWave Champion for Auroa, our AI-powered advisory automation platform,” said Andrei Beniash, business analyst manager in the RSM US LLP Tax practice. “The platform uses AI to quickly analyze client data and combines it with flexible rules and templates to streamline advisory work, improve accuracy and help teams deliver faster.”

2025 RSM NextWave finalists

• Accelerating Tax Quality & Risk Management (TQRM) Excellence with AI: An AI-powered agent that accelerates and standardizes TQRM consultations by instantly surfacing relevant guidance, policies and historical insights to boost efficiency, consistency and knowledge retention across the firm.
• AI Smart Desk: This solution uses retrieval-augmented generation to ground responses in trusted knowledge, context-augmented generation to tailor outputs based on situational and workflow context and knowledge-augmented generation to apply structured expert knowledge. Natural language processing with automation streamlines operational support, increases efficiency and reduces wait times.
• Client Response Genie: This solution is an AI chatbot that automates client due diligence responses by transforming a manual process into a scalable, intelligent workflow—delivering faster, more accurate answers using AI.
• Solution Recommendation Agent: This AI agent analyzes client meeting transcripts and statement of work data to identify business opportunities, uncover unmet needs and align them with relevant service offerings.

From innovation to impact

The winning platform will move directly into a pilot phase at RSM, where its AI capabilities will be tested and scaled to improve efficiency, accuracy and client outcomes. While the winner advances to pilot, all submitted solutions will be evaluated for potential future development as part of RSM’s broader innovation roadmap that reinforces its $1 billion technology investment strategy.

In addition, the RSM US Foundation will donate $40,000 to a charity selected by the winning team, reflecting the firm’s dedication to innovation with social impact.

“Innovation is no longer optional—it’s a business imperative,” de la Fe added. “NextWave ensures that AI and digital solutions are created by the people who know the work best, applied in ways that deliver measurable impact for clients, employees and communities.”