Calgary’s Neo Financial achieves billion-dollar ‘unicorn’ status
CALGARY –

Calgary’s tech community can boast one more “unicorn” with fintech firm Neo Financial’s shut of a funding spherical that values the startup at a lot more than $1 billion.

Neo Financial — which was started in 2019 by Andrew Chau and Jeff Adamson, co-founders of food stuff delivery app Skip the Dishes, as well as Kris Examine — declared Thursday that it has lifted $185 million in a series C fundraising round showcasing New York-based Valar Ventures as Neo’s lead trader.

Paul Lee — a associate at San Francisco-based Tribe Capital, which participated in the funding round — confirmed in an job interview that Neo Financial’s hottest fundraise is based on a present valuation of extra than $1 billion.

That would make the Calgary company a person of only a handful of Alberta-centered tech startups that can declare coveted “unicorn” status. (The expression is employed to emphasize the rarity of achieving that degree of valuation in the tech startup earth).

“We spend a good deal of time operating with a particular subset of providers that strike the benchmarks appropriate out of the rails, and Neo matches that photograph,” Lee reported. “The figures communicate for on their own, with Neo.”

The series C round provides the amount of money of complete enterprise cash funding elevated by Neo Economical in the previous 3 a long time to nearly $300 million. In addition to Valar Ventures and Tribe Funds, other participants in the collection C spherical contain Altos Ventures, Blank Ventures, Gaingels, Maple VC, and Knollwood Advisory.

Neo Financial’s purpose is to construct new person-helpful banking technology and solutions. The enterprise suggests 1 million buyers are now utilizing its product or service line, which features the Neo Credit score Card, a hard cash-back credit history card issued by ATB Economical and backed by the MasterCard network, as effectively as the Neo significant-curiosity savings account supplied by Concentra Financial institution.

The firm also provides “Neo Commit” — which it claims is Canada’s 1st actively managed, thoroughly electronic investment motor vehicle — and has ideas to offer a new home finance loan products ahead of the finish of the yr.

“The rate at which this group releases new items and grows its shopper foundation is amid the swiftest we have found in our professions,” said Andrew McCormack, a founding lover of Valar Ventures, in a launch.

Chau explained in an interview that the banking marketplace has so much lagged driving other industries when it will come to creating consumer-welcoming, straightforward-to-use technological improvements for its shoppers.

He said deciding on to identified the enterprise in Calgary, absent from traditional banking headquarters like Toronto and New York, was a acutely aware choice.

“For us, we have often been hoping to go from the grain, to certainly reimagine monetary institutions,” Chau stated. “And the very best way to do that is to avoid that groupthink and have a fresh new standpoint.”

Neo Financial’s personnel head rely has swelled to 650 men and women, and the business is actively recruiting for much more than 100 positions in Calgary and Winnipeg.

The company occupies about 10,000 square metres of office environment house in downtown Calgary, which include 5,600 in transformed retail space on the fourth flooring of the city’s historic Hudson’s Bay building.

Alberta has found a growth in the development of its tech sector in modern many years as the province works to diversify its oil and fuel-based economy.

According to the Canadian Enterprise Capital and Personal Equity Affiliation, the province broke its own all-time file for venture funds financial investment in 2021, with overall deal benefit of $561 million and a 64 per cent improve in full deal rely.

In Calgary, other tech “unicorns” valued at additional than $1 billion considering that 2019 include things like Solium Capital (now Shareworks), RS Electricity Team (Enverus Intelligence Study Inc.), Parvus Therapeutics and Benevity.

This report by The Canadian Push was very first released May well 5, 2022.
