Altro (Formerly Known as Perch) Raises $18M in Funding to Enable 63M Americans to ‘Netflix-and-Build Better Credit’

May 13, 2022 | Business

Backed by Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners and Pendulum, the free credit-building and financial literacy app rebrands itself as “Altro”; secures funding to democratize credit building for all through alt forms of payment history like Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu subscriptions


The new funding will be used to build the company’s financial literacy catalog/educational offerings and reach new users looking to build or repair credit

San Francisco, Calif. – WEBWIRE –



Altro (formerly known as Perch), the no-cost platform that helps people build credit through nontraditional payments, today announced $18 million in Series A funding led by Pendulum, with participation from Jay-Z’s Marcy Ventures, as well as Citi Ventures, Black Capital Fund, and Concrete Rose Fund, and individual investors such as Dick Parsons (Equity Alliance, RNR) and Deborah Quazzo (GSV Ventures), among others. The new funds will build its growing credit and financial literacy program and bring education and financial power to those widely excluded from traditional finance systems. The company is also announcing its rebrand to Altro — which means “other,” translated from Italian — effective immediately.


Approximately 63 million Americans are unbanked or underbanked, leaving them with little access to mainstream banking services such as credit cards or loans. For younger generations, in particular, this creates a paradoxical problem: in order to get a credit card or apply for a loan, one first needs to build credit. Altro, which allows users to build credit through recurring payment forms like digital subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify, Hulu and more), is offering an alternative so that anyone can build and improve credit from existing spending habits.  


“With all the other available data to demonstrate a person’s fiscal responsibility, there’s no excuse to continue to rely on outdated methods like credit cards and loan payments, which are predatory and exclusionary at best,“ said Altro co-founder and CEO Michael Broughton. ”Perch has proven the demand for more accessible forms of credit building, and now as Altro, we’re creating a movement, bringing financial empowerment to all”


Altro users can see an increase in their credit scores in less time than traditional means of building credit for the same results. In addition to boosting credit scores, Altro is focused on educating users through its vast catalog of educational audio clips. The 350+ snippets cover topics like cryptocurrency, investing, and trading, which not only allow users to become more financially savvy, but also positively impact users’ scores the more they engage.


“Contemporary fintech has traditionally been designed by and for individuals with strong financial health, a thinking that leaves many behind. Created by a team who experienced this problem firsthand, Altro has developed a financial empowerment platform that unlocks economic opportunity for those that the credit building system hasn’t been built for,” said Rish Sinha, Managing Director at Pendulum.


The app, which launched as Perch in 2020, shot to the top 10 in the App Store amid a surge in sign-ups — amassing a 200,000 person waitlist — validating the need for a modernized, accessible approach to credit building. The Series A funding round brings Altro’s total funding to $21 million. 


Participating subscriptions services include but are not limited to: 


Netflix, Youtube Premium, Dollar Shave Club, Adobe Creative Cloud, Nintendo Online, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Chegg, Crunchyroll, Audible, Sun Basket, Hulu, Spotify, Home Chef, Xbox Live, HelloFresh, Barkbox, Amazon Prime, CBS All Access, LinkedIn Premium, Coursera, PlayStation Live, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Blue Apron, Curology, FabFitFun, ESPN Plus, LeetCode, Birchbox, Ipsy and Billie


To learn more about Altro’s approach to democratizing credit building, visit altro.com. Download on the iOS App Store and pre-register on the Google Play Store.


About Altro (formerly Perch): 


Altro combats the frustrating process of credit building by leveraging nontraditional data such as other recurring expenses to help establish or enhance one’s credit score. Backed by Marcy Ventures, Pendulum, Citi Ventures, Black Capital Fund, Concrete Rose Fund, along with other global investors, Altro has something for anyone working on their financial goals — from saving money to learning the finer points of financial literacy — available all for free. Altro was founded in 2019 as Perch and is based in San Francisco.  To learn more about how Altro is removing the barriers to credit building, visit altro.io.

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Pixis (Formerly Pyxis One) Raises $100M in SoftBank Vision Fund 2-led Series C to Grow Its Codeless AI Infrastructure

Jan 21, 2022 | Business

Pixis (formerly known as Pyxis One), a leading provider of contextual codeless AI infrastructure for complete marketing optimization, today announced it has secured US $100M in Series C funding. Pixis will leverage the fresh funds to help the company rapidly scale its AI platforms and plugins, as well as accelerate expansions across North America, Europe, and APAC.

The Series C round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from new investor General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm. Existing investors Celesta, Premji Invest, and Chiratae Ventures also participated in the round. With the close of its US $17M Series B round just four months prior, Pixis has raised a total of US $124M to date since its inception in 2018.

Founded by Shubham A. Mishra (Global CEO), Vrushali Prasade (CTO), and Harikrishna Valiyath (CBO), the Pixis AI infrastructure leverages self-evolving neural networks to empower over 100 customers worldwide with AI-powered decision-making. Having witnessed a 600% growth since its inception, today, Pixis is uniquely poised to disrupt marketing to make it more agile and data-backed, especially in a world that is speedily heading towards a cookieless web. The SoftBank Vision Fund 2 investment in Pixis confirms that in a cookieless world, Artificial Intelligence could be the big differentiating factor for brands.

Priya Saiprasad, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers said, “Marketing is one of the largest spending categories for companies but many of its decisions are still driven by intuition rather than data. Pixis has developed an end-to-end codeless AI infrastructure, that equips teams with cutting-edge data science to automate and improve core processes, from budget allocation to real-time campaign optimization and reporting. We are excited to partner with Shubham and the team to support their mission to make marketing data-backed, intelligent, agile, and effortlessly scalable in the new cookie-less world.”

Shubham Mishra continued, “The web going cookieless, in conjunction with decreasing access to the depth of data that was previously available, is a worrisome situation for marketers. In this environment, it is self-evolving neural networks that are proving to be invaluable assets in countering the disruptions to the marketing landscape. We’re excited to partner with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and General Atlantic to make codeless AI infrastructure accessible to every market in the world.”

Customers using the Pixis AI infrastructure have witnessed a 20% decrease in acquisition costs on average, in addition to at least 300 hours of manual work saved per month. The alluring factor for customers, however, is definitely the prospect of activating AI in 8 seconds without having to write a single line of code.

“Pixis is on a rapid growth trajectory and the fresh funds will help us far exceed our timelines for that”, said Neel Pandya, the company’s APAC CEO. “Especially with the introduction of our unique AI plugin, we’ve recorded enormous growth and retention with our current customer base. The capital will also help us speed up our tech development and bring to market newer products more quickly.”

Looking ahead, Pixis aims to add over 200 customizable self-evolving AI models to the infrastructure it offers and has already introduced close to four dozen AI models since its last funding. And now, with the US$100 million Series C funding, Pixis is all set to fast-track tech and AI development.

About Pixis (formerly Pyxis One)

Pixis is a California-based technology company that provides codeless AI infrastructure to enable customers to scale accurate data-driven marketing. The company’s codeless AI infrastructure currently comprises over four-dozen proprietary AI models that are deployed across an ecosystem of products and plugins. Pixis is on a mission to provide marketers with robust plug-and-play AI products without them having to write a single line of code.

About General Atlantic

General Atlantic is a leading global growth equity firm with more than four decades of experience providing capital and strategic support for over 445 growth companies throughout its history. Established in 1980 to partner with visionary entrepreneurs and deliver lasting impact, the firm combines a collaborative global approach, sector-specific expertise, a long-term investment horizon, and a deep understanding of growth drivers to partner with great entrepreneurs and management teams to scale innovative businesses around the world. General Atlantic currently has over $86 billion in assets under management inclusive of all products as of September 30, 2021, and more than 215 investment professionals based in New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Munich, Palo Alto, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Stamford. For more information on General Atlantic, please visit the website: www.generalatlantic.com.

Related link
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/softbank-investment-advisers_marketing-is-one-of-the-largest-spend-categories-activity-6889927122006106112-_7xh
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/18/softbank-ai-infrastructure-pyxis-one-pixis/

Media contacts
Brand: Pixis
Contact: Anjali Devaiah, Rishabh Chauhan
Email: anjali@pixis.ai , rishabh@one2en.com
Website: https://pixis.ai/