Aven, a technology company offering consumer credit cards backed by home equity, announced a $142 million series D round of funding led by Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors, including Caffeinated Capital, Electric Capital, Founders Fund, and The General Partnership.
Aven was launched in 2019 by Sadi Khan, Collin Wikman, and Murtada Shah, former product, design, and engineering executives at Facebook and Square. And Aven is on a mission to provide consumers with the lowest cost and most convenient access to capital.
The company’s first product (the Aven Home Card) enables homeowners to access their home equity in minutes, starting at $0 to get, with all the benefits of a traditional credit card. And since launching in California in 2022, the company has issued over $1.5 billion in credit lines for the Home Card, earning a 4.9 star rating on Trustpilot. The company has also saved customers over $100 million in interest payments to date.
Homeowners have been drawn to Aven’s ease, efficiency, and lower cost of accessing capital:
— Save 50% or more on monthly interest rates – with rates as low as 7.99% APR (the lowest APR of any credit card in the US)
— No annual fee, no notarization/closing fee option available in every state that Aven operates in
— 2% unlimited cashback and 7% cashback on hotels booked in the Aven travel portal
— Credit lines up to $250,000
— Approval in less than 5 minutes and closing in as fast as 15 minutes
— Pay only for what you use and debt protection offered to protect against adverse events
Last year, Aven grew revenue about 3x and broadened its offering to include a free and mobile-first financial advisory tool Aven Advisor – which has quickly amassed over 160,000 members. The growth investment will be used for offering Aven’s Home Card in all 50 states, scale Advisor, and expand into new categories including auto-backed cards, mortgage refinance, etc.
The company is also announcing an advisory board – which is focused on helping the company scale while protecting the interests of its cardholders and offering insights on industry conditions and strategic opportunities. And the Aven Advisory Board will be made up of four executives: Michael DeVito, former CEO of Freddie Mac; Tim Mayopoulos, former CEO of Fannie Mae; Jim Messina, former Deputy Chief of Staff to the White House under the Obama administration; and Kevin Warsh, former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Aven is currently available in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming with a goal of reaching all 50 states by next year.
KEY QUOTES:
“We believe there’s no reason for anyone who owns an asset and has good credit history to use unsecured credit. Full stop. Unsecured credit is expensive and unhealthy. With our asset-backed credit cards, we give consumers credit for what they own – saving them thousands of dollars without sacrificing convenience.”
– Sadi Khan, co-founder and CEO of Aven
“By using technology to drive efficiency, Aven has built a product that responsibly helps drive down the cost of capital by over 50% for most US homeowners who are using alternative credit cards.”
– Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures
“I was blown away by the Aven team when I first met them several years ago. But I was initially skeptical that their core product would scale in the staid, calcified industry structure that has prevailed in the mortgage market for decades. The Aven team is proving the skeptics wrong in a big way. I am thrilled to be their partner.”
– Kevin Warsh, Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
