Kudos, an AI-powered smart wallet that automatically maximizes consumer rewards and benefits on every purchase, announced it has completed a $10.2 million Series A fundraising round. This oversubscribed round was led by QED Investors. Additional participants included returning investor Patron, and The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly, Samsung Next, SV Angel, Precursor Ventures, The Mini Fund, Newtype Ventures, and the Four Cities Fund. Kudos plans to use some of the funding to roll out various new services that will augment its quickly evolving smart wallet product.
Kudos acts as a comprehensive smart wallet assistant for consumers and it can recommend or automatically select the best credit card for them to use when paying to maximize their rewards and cash back. Recently, the company also launched several new features, including MariaGPT (an AI-powered card discovery tool with over 3,000 cards currently in its database), Dream Wallet (automatically recommends cards that fill gaps in a member’s wallet based on their spending habits), and Kudos Boost (delivers personalized rewards that augment card rewards across over 15,000 partner brands, including Walmart and Sephora).
Since the company’s seed funding round, Kudos has grown its member base to over 200,000 registered users and increased its annualized checkout Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) to $200 million. And with the funding, Kudos plans to unlock more growth via the launch of several new products and services. This includes an AI-powered hub providing spend optimization insights, the expansion of MariaGPT into a general-purpose personal finance assistant, and a portal allowing members to book flights with points-all without leaving Kudos.
Launched in 2021 by a team with experience from Google, PayPal, and Affirm, Kudos is available as a browser extension (compatible with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari) or as an app in the Apple App Store.
KEY QUOTES:
“Consumers want to know they’re getting the most for their money as they juggle budgets, multiple credit cards and rewards systems that can be confusing. Kudos simplifies all of that with one easy-to-use app and extension. We’re proud that both QED Investors and Patron returned to participate in this round, signaling their confidence in our current growth and future plans. This latest investment allows us to continue expanding our services to more consumers and merchants.”
– Tikue Anazodo, co-founder and CEO of Kudos
“Kudos is using AI to finally unlock the promise of ‘self-driving money.’ Unlike traditional personal finance apps, their ‘always-on’ approach delivers value to consumers, merchants and card issuers, without requiring a change in behavior. Kudos gives consumers the ultimate peace of mind as they shop. The team has executed with incredible discipline and pace and we’re excited to help them build one of the next iconic fintech brands.”
– Amias Gerety, partner at QED Investors and the newest member of Kudos’ board of directors
“As Kudos’ first venture investor, we were drawn to how they were building for an existing passionate community of credit card optimizers, aiming to create a more elegant product that broadened smart shopping to a wider audience. Given their early and accelerating traction, it was an obvious decision to continue backing Tikue and team as they looked to further scale their business. We are very excited about the massive audience and business Kudos can grow to in the near future.”
– Jason Yeh, co-founder and general partner at Patron
