- Open banking platform Bud raised $80 million in Series B funding.
- The investment adds to the $20 million Series A investment the U.K.-based company secured in 2019.
- Bud brings expertise in data intelligence and machine learning to the open banking ecosystem.
Intelligent open banking platform Bud secured $80 million in Series B funding today. The round was led by Bellis Phantom Holdco, an indirect affiliate of investment funds managed by TDR Capital. The investment, which also featured participation from existing investors including Outward VC, brings the company’s total capital to more than $100 million – which includes a $20 million Series A round raised in 2019.
“Bud’s transactional intelligence services allow applications to become truly personalized for the first time,” Bud co-founder and CEO Ed Maslaveckas said. “For example, our lending customers can expect to see an increase of about 85% in capacity by combining open banking data with our AI capabilities in their affordability assessments.”
ANZ, Street UK, and TotallyMoney are among the companies that use Bud’s technology. While ANZ, Street UK, and TotallyMoney rely on Bud’s platform to automate affordability checks, other Bud clients – such as HSBC and Credit Karma – leverage Bud’s technology to help their customers better understand their own finances. The London, U.K.-based company plans to use the funds to build its client portfolio, further develop its models, and fuel international expansion.
To that last point, Maslaveckas told AltFi that he anticipated entering “two major new markets” by the end of 2022. Maslaveckas pointed to growing demand for Bud’s services, which leverage transactional AI models that help financial institutions personalize digital offerings and automate lending decisions.
Maslaveckas sees Bud as an emerging player in the open banking ecosystem, bringing innovations, data intelligence, and machine learning. He considers Bud as a fresh addition to a field that already has leading players such as Tink, Plaid, and TrueLayer that have demonstrated innovation in aggregation, connectivity, and payments.
“We are hugely excited by the potential of Bud,” TDR Capital Managing Partner Gary Lindsay said, “not only in the ability of its platform to truly harness the opportunities from open banking, but also in its far-reaching potential to help power other businesses we are invested in.”
Founded in 2015, Bud unveiled v2.0 of its Affordability API last month. The new solution helps clients take full advantage of Bud’s new Open Banking Affordability capabilities. The simplified API now enables customers to get started quickly without having to immediately think about customization options.
Photo by Ben Mack
