GripinThe investment application, which simplifies investing through automatic purchases of shares in the brand, in which users regularly shop, announced on Wednesday that it secured the financing round of series A in the amount of $ 11 million, bringing a total amount collected to around $ 22 million.
In addition to the announcement, Gripin also revealed that he exceeded 500,000 registered users, which indicates that his approach to investing resonates with many users. Gripin also claims that about 1 million application download and 100,000 active users per month. The company refused to share the valuation.
Investments and growth of users mean important milestones for Gripin, reflecting investors' trust in the company's business model and its ability to disrupt traditional investment methods. The stock exchange can be intimidating for many Americans – apparently only 62% of adults in the USA have all supplies directly.
The new capital will be invested in building software and UX engineering teams, as well as product development. Noteworthy, upcoming functions include Chatbot AI, which grifin is working on, as well as family plans for parents who want to introduce their small adult children to invest.
Gripin, founded in 2017 by Aaron Foug, because Starr and Robin Fouga, aims to simplify investing for those who consider it discouraging. Initially, based on the concept of “shares where you are shopping”, the company transformed in 2024 into an investment model that automatically invests 1 USD from user transactions into shares related to their purchases. For example, if the user is shopping at Walmart, 1 USD is invested in Walmart shares. Users can also manually adjust the investment amounts. The model turned out to be effective, as evidenced by the internal Grifina data showing a 234% increase in expenditure in Walmart Six months after users bought their supplies.
Another approach that GiFiNi undertakes to simplify investing is to provide educational materials that offer users everyday insight into financial knowledge. The company plans to expand its educational offer and develop chatbot AI, which can summarize articles on the platform and provide quick answers to user questions. Chatbot will also provide insight into individual accounts, responding to queries such as: “When did I make this investment?” or “When did I receive a dividend?”
The implementation time is currently unknown, because Gripin wants to make sure that chatbot provides accurate answers before its launch.
“AI can be an amazing feature, but sometimes he can't give the right things,” said TechCrunch Aaron Fore, who is the general director of Grifina. “So we make sure that we stretch to me and cross T before we introduce something like this.”
The educational offer is particularly important due to the database of gifin users. Many users are women in the 1940s and 1960s, a group that traditionally has less confidence in their investment knowledge. There are also younger women aged 18 to 24, which is why Gripin is considering adding budget tools that give users insight into their expenses.
One of the most required functions are family plans that would allow users to provide their gripin accounts with family members and introduce investing to younger users. Many younger generations hesitated to invest in the stock exchange. Although the market has improved in recent months, it is still associated with risk.
“One of the cool things that we want to do with family plans is (allow) parents or grandparents to finance children or grandchildren's accounts, so there is not too much financial stress,” added Aaron Froug.
The round was run by Nava Ventures with the participation of Alloy Labs, Draper Associates, Gaingels, Nevcaut Ventures and TTV Capital. In addition to financing Freddie Martignetti, a partner of Nava Ventures, joined the board of Grifin.
