It’s now clear where this month’s $10.5 million in funding for investment app Acorns came from — and what it’s for. On Wednesday (April 15) Acorns said it has raised $23 million in a funding round that will let it launch its first app for a wearable device.
The Series C round was led by Greycroft Partners and e.ventures, with participation from Sound Ventures, Garland Capital and MATH Venture Partners. The new funding, which comes 13 months after the company raised $6.2 million, brings Acorns’ total to $32 million.
The new money will be used to grow the company’s product portfolio, including the addition of a Web version for desktop computers, updates to the the company’s existing mobile apps, and the launch of an app for one or more wearable devices, Acorns CEO Jeff Cruttenden told VentureBeat. But he wouldn’t confirm that the first wearables target is the Apple Watch.
Cruttenden did confirm that Acorns also plans to launch internationally by the end of the year. “We have some really excellent partners coming on board to take us overseas, and we should have announcements on that before the end of the year as well,” he said.
Since launching in August 2014, the app has grown to more than 650,000 members, opened more than 300,000 investment accounts and linked over a million credit and debit cards, the company said.
The app works by rounding up the price of purchases, then putting the “spare change” into an investment account that has no minimum balance requirements. The money can then be invested in a variety of professionally managed investments. The goal is to make it as simple as possible to get young mobile-oriented users to begin saving and investing money. That seems to be working: In seven months, the app has processed more than 28 million trades, the company said, and 75 percent of Acorns users are under age 35.
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