It is almost universally accepted that the future of finance belongs to robo-advisors but recent developments have challenged that idea. While startups like Betterment and Wealthfront have been good at grabbing headlines, the same cannot be said when it comes to market share. This is largely thanks to the competing services being launched industry incumbents. "[…] In the year since established players like Schwab and Vanguard launched'competing' services, a fresh look at the robo-advisor landscape reveals that their growth rates are falling rapidly, to just 1/3rd their levels of one year ago. Their apparent demise: an inability to scale their marketing to sustain growth rates in the face of increasing competition and challenging client acquisition costs, coupled with a similar inability to grow their average account sizes."