Vise, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to help wealth managers manage portfolios, raised a new round of funding on Tuesday valuing the company at more than $1 billion, according to one of its founders.
Ribbit Capital, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, led the $65 million in Series C funding for Vise, its latest fintech investment. Its previous investments include Affirm, Robinhood, Wealthfront, and others. Micky Malka, managing partner at Ribbit Capital said in a statement that Vise has the “opportunity and potential to shape the future of investment management.”
Sequoia Capital, another Silicon Valley venture firm that led a $14.5 million Series A and a $45 million Series B round in December, also participated in the latest round. Vise has now raised a total of more than $125 million.
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Samir Vasavada, who co-founded Vise with fellow artificial intelligence wunderkind Runik Mehrotra, tweeted Tuesday that Vise was valued at more than $1 billion.
“In 2020, we successfully focused on strengthening our foundation, and now in 2021 we are focused on scaling Vise to make it an even more valuable platform for advisors and their clients,” Vasavada, Vise’s CEO, said in a statement about the investments.
“In the past year our assets under management have grown by more than 60x and we’ve seen incredibly strong demand from advisors. Put simply, this funding will allow us to make even bigger investments faster.”
Last May, when Vise raised its Series A, it said it planned to rapidly grow its team of six employees and that it was in the process of onboarding as much as $800 million in assets under management. The startup has grown to more than 70 employees (including a computer scientist who previously worked at Avantis Investors and Dimensional Fund Advisors) as well as others. The startup said it plans to have at least 100 employees before this summer, as it predicted.
But assets under management weren’t added as quickly as it anticipated in 2020. In April, regulatory filings showed Vise was managing $144 million, although the company said that wasn’t an indication of its performance or success. “It’s not about the specific number. It’s about the track that Vise is on,” Vasavada told RIA Intel. “If we looked back on our primary goals of the company last year, we achieved those.”
Vise has continued to grow throughout the spring. Since the Series B funding round in December, assets under management have more than quadrupled to over $250 million and the number of client accounts have more than doubled, the company said Tuesday. It has completed integrations with major custodians — Charles Schwab and Fidelity — and released several new products and features.
With the new funding, Vise plans to keep doing those things; hiring, growing its business and continuing to work on its portfolio management system, which its investors are enthusiastic about.
“Vise’s rapid growth is a reflection of the progress the team has made over the past year in advancing its technology and building a truly world-class team,” Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia and a Vise board member, said in a statement.
“Since we first partnered with Vise at the seed, the company is in an even stronger position to benefit from powerful tailwinds in the industry. We couldn’t be more excited to be further deepening our partnership with Samir, Runik and team.”
Michael Thrasher (@Mike_Thrasher) is a reporter at RIA Intel based in New York City.
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