Ellevest gets $7.5M investment from Allianz Life
Funds will help the digital-advice platform for women expand its business, say CEO Sallie Krawcheck and other executives.
Allianz Life has invested $7.5 million in Ellevest, the digital-advice platform for women co-founded by industry veteran Sallie Krawcheck, as part of a $12.3 million extension of Ellevest’s Series A financing round.
The funds will help Ellevest “expand its business, which is growing quickly at a pivotal point in history,” the firms said Tuesday in a joint announcement.
The companies did not specify what other firms were part of the $12.3 million Series A extension. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ellevest has cumulatively raised $92 million from investors including: Rethink Impact; Morningstar; Penny Pritzker’s PSP Capital; Pivotal Ventures, the investment and incubation company founded by Melinda Gates; PayPal Ventures; Elaine Wynn, co-founder of Wynn Resorts; Valerie Jarrett; Mellody Hobson; Gingerbread Capital; Mastercard; Astia Angels; and Contour Ventures.
“We’re at a critical moment for women,” according to Krawcheck, who also serves as Ellevest CEO. “Women have disproportionately lost their jobs during the pandemic, because women are overrepresented in hard-hit industries like caregiving and hospitality.”
Krawcheck added: “At the same time, women have been shouldering more of the burden of pandemic family care.”
As children started school in the fall — many remotely — about 865,000 women left the workforce in September, she noted, calling this “backwards shift” an “unprecedented” event that she predicted “will have ripple effects for years.”
Ellevest was started in 2016 by Krawcheck and Charlie Kroll, who previously built his own fintech startup, Andera.
The Allianz investment in Ellevest “will help address some of the most critical issues facing women today, and provide innovative solutions and resources that can help women at every stage of their financial journey,” according to Walter White, president and CEO of Allianz Life.
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