Alinea Invest, a fintech app providing AI-powered wealth administration geared toward Gen Z girls, has $3.4 million in seed funding forward of the launch of a digital AI assistant that may assist customers with their investing wants. The fundraising comes on the heels of 225,000 downloads of Alinea’s app, resulting in a income run fee of $1.8 million, permitting the New York space startup’s six-person workforce to function profitably.
Based amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Alinea was created by co-founders Anam Lakhani and Eve Halimi, in addition to CTO Daniel Nissenbaum who met at Barnard School and Columbia College. Lakhani and Halimi, now co-CEOs, had interned on Wall Road however confronted an identical ache level when it got here to cash: They didn’t know tips on how to greatest make investments. This concept led to the creation of a marketing strategy for an app whereas taking an entrepreneurship class in school. Later, the founders headed into full-time jobs in funding banking and at a growth-stage startup when COVID hit.
The pandemic finally freed up extra time for the workforce to work on their app, in order that they utilized to startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2021 and obtained in.
“The pain point we saw is that people like us who are young women, Gen Zs, children of immigrants, they have no idea where to start. Financial literacy is a massive pain point across the United States,” notes Lakhani. “We wanted to build an alternate platform that was really personalized, taught you how to build your wealth, and did it for you.”
Eve Halimi in orange and Anam Lakhani. Picture Credit:: Alinea Make investments
The app, which is described as a “Wealthfront meets Robinhood,” is constructed with a Gen Z viewers in thoughts. That features a heavy deal with an approachable design to make investing appear much less intimidating. The aim is to draw customers as they’re simply leaving school and getting into the workforce or getting their first paychecks, then serving to them to automate their portfolio. This differentiates Alinea from different female-focused fintechs, like Ellevest.
Many customers begin with Alinea’s automated investing mannequin, however later reap the benefits of the choice to purchase and promote shares as they turn out to be extra subtle buyers.
Nonetheless, not like Robinhood and a few others, Alinea operates on a subscription enterprise mannequin that prices a flat $120 per yr.
One other differentiator for Alinea are its “playlists.” These let customers construct their very own direct indexes — in a approach that’s considerably akin to curating music on Spotify. In the present day, Alinea buyers have personalized their very own ETFs round themes like local weather change, feminine management, AI, style, and even abortion rights. Day by day, customers create 1000’s of playlists, and these can be shared with others.
Picture Credit: Alinea Make investments
The corporate up to now has been profitable at buying customers by way of content material advertising and marketing, notably on TikTok, the place the founders speak about investing and their startup journey. To this point, their following has led to over 100 million views throughout their hashtags on the quick video platform, the founders instructed TechCrunch.
With the seed spherical of $3.4 million, Alinea desires to maneuver farther into the AI market with the launch of an AI monetary adviser. Whereas the app is already leveraging a mixture of AI and professional advisers to make inventory suggestions, the brand new characteristic, due out later this yr, will supply an interactive method to ask for investing assist.
The AI helper can be tacked onto a brand new subscription.
“There will be an additional upscale tier, essentially, where it will be like a sort of AI copilot — an AI financial adviser that will answer all your questions . . . that are very personalized to you,” notes Halimi.
The AI will contemplate a wide range of components when answering questions, together with the person’s age, threat tolerance, previous monitor document, and extra. The workforce expects to launch the characteristic round Q2 or Q3 this yr, they mentioned.
Although competitors is rife within the fintech area, Alinea believes they will seize a specific demographic — the youthful, Gen Z investor, and largely girls (80% of the app’s customers are girls). The typical Alinea investor makes $80,000 per yr and is round 22 to 24 years outdated.
The brand new funding was led by F7 Ventures and GFR and included Worklife Ventures (Bri Kimmel), FoundersX Fund, Gaingels, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi. Alinea had beforehand raised a $2.3 million pre-seed spherical from Goodwater, Kima Ventures, Harvard, Diaspora, and ex-Robinhood staff. The founders haven’t added to the board with the brand new capital, however moderately plan to spend money on additional product improvement, together with the AI copilot, personalization, and different instructional initiatives.
“Financial literacy and investing is a crucial path to wealth and financial stability for women and Gen Z,” mentioned Kelly Graziadei, F7 normal accomplice. “We are proud to invest in Eve and Anam as they build AI-powered investing with Alinea — making it easier and more accessible than ever for people to invest according to their interests and values. We can’t think of a better team to open up the path to a new generation of wealth creation,” she added.
