A number of robo-advisors including Wealthfront, Betterment and Personal Capital are garnering more AUM and raising even more institutional capital.
A host of fin tech startups are attacking traditional brokers such as Charles Schwab and wealth management services offering automated and semi-automated financial guidance services or what have come to be known as Robo-Advisors.
And the robo-advisors are bulking up with investment funding, according to CB Insights data prepared for the Wall Street Journal. In 2014, robo-advisors raised $290M in funding, just over twice the amount raised in 2013 and over 8 times the amount in 2012.
The rise in funding comes as the result of a number of robo-advisors raising large financing rounds. Most recently, New York-based Betterment raised $60M in new funding led by Francisco Partners. This funding raised in 2015 represents 1/5 of the total funding deployed to robo-advisors in 2014. Personal Capital and Wealthfront each raised $50M+ rounds last year from investors covering a wide range ranging from VCs (Spark Capital) to PE firms (Corsair Capital) to strategics (BBVA Ventures, USAA).
The chart below highlights the top 5 most well-funded automated or semi-automated financial advisor startups to date.
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