Serial fintech founder raises $20M for Ant Money to make micro-investing even more accessible
- ByStartupStory | December 23, 2021
Serial fintech entrepreneur Walter Cruttenden founded Acorns with his son, Jeff, in 2012 with the goal of helping low- and middle-income households invest and save responsibly. The pair wanted to simplify investing for the millions that have trouble getting started or continuing to invest.
Then in 2018, Walter went live with a new company — Blast. With that venture, he aimed to challenge traditional banking yet again by bringing personalized financial tools to gamers. In other words, Blast wanted to give users a way to save money while playing video games. (Cruttenden apparently acquired some patents from Acorns in order to start this company.)
Now as 2021 comes to a close, Cruttenden’s latest fintech, Ant Money, is announcing it has raised $20 million in funding (a mix of previously unannounced seed and Series A capital) and acquired Blast via a stock-for-stock merger.
Cruttenden founded Ant Money, a micro-income startup, with Mike Gleason in March of 2020. Gleason, who previously founded and sold Consumer Brands, also had previously teamed up with Walter to start a data monetization company called Ant Transaction Machines. He serves as Ant Money’s CEO.
“In the process of building another company called Ant Transaction Machines and working with Blast, we realized that if we created a common platform that we could move faster in terms of our larger mission, which was helping people open their first investment account,” Gleason said.
That common platform is (obviously) Ant Money. Gleason describes the startup as “a comprehensive, larger vision which now involves three apps and a platform.” Its current apps that are driving investment accounts launched about this time last year: ATM and Learn & Earn.
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