The real intriguing question is what happened between October and now to see such a fast funding turnaround? Read on to discover our interpretation.
After 35+ years in the world of Investor Relations, marketing and public relations working with pre- and post-IPO companies, investment bankers, and VC firms, it's fair to say I've learned a bit about the world of finance and Wall Street.
Case in point, an axiom of the investing world is that the worst time to raise money is when you need it.
Conversely, the best time to take on new funding is when you really don't need the money.
By extension, Salt Lake City-based Atomic must be doing really well because even though they just raised $22 million back in October, they've now brought on an additional $40 million in a Series B round of funding. Craziness!
This latest funding round was co-led by Cottonwood Heights, Utah-based Mercato Partners and Greylock, with participation from Core Innovation Capital, Portage, and ATX Venture Partners.
In total, Atomic has now raised over $78 million.
The Atomic Business Model
Atomic defines itself as "the market leading provider of payroll APIs" – in other words, Application Programming Interfaces (aka, software code that connects one software program to others).
Simply put, Atomic is a Software-as-a-Service Financial Technology company that helps consumers maximize their take-home payroll dollars by helping them better understand and control their federal income tax deductions.
As a result, Atomic's FinTech platform is quite attractive to banks, credit unions, NeoBanks, and other FinTechs for two primary reasons:
- Atomic minimizes the potential for fraud, and
- It increases the likelihood said financial institutions will attract and keep consumers as customers.
According to its news release, Atomic's offerings are currently available to over 125 million working Americans, with 17.5 million having already "entered" an Atomic-powered workflow.
AUTHOR'S NOTE #1: Both numbers are pretty staggering when you consider that there are only 330 million people in the entire country.
Atomic accomplishes this by integrating its platform with
- Over 450 unique payroll providers,
- 70+ financial institutions and partners, and
- 12 of the largest FinTech firms in the world.
Among its clients/partners are such firms as
- Bond,
- Bottomline,
- Coinbase,
- Column Tax,
- Dave,
- Digital Onboarding,
- Klover,
- Lendtable,
- MOCA,
- MX,
- ONE,
- Propel,
- Unifimoney, and
- Welcome Tech,
just to name a few.
According to Jordan Wright, Atomic CEO and Co-Founder:
"Our goal is to build a FinTech infrastructure that enables a new generation of bank accounts and transforms banking applications into consumer-centric platforms."
The Hidden Reason behind Atomic's Surprise Series B Funding Round – Its Explosive 83X Growth Rate of Consumer Reach (In Under 3 Months)
Interestingly, what is NOT shared in Atomic's news release, however, is any sense of why this FinTech was able to raise so much money so quickly after closing its Series A round of funding just five months ago.
To figure that out you have to do a bit of digging.
Specifically, as noted in Atomic's October 2021 news release announcing its $22 million Series A funding:
"Atomic is trusted by more than 40 financial institutions, FinTech and technology firms, including 11 of the largest consumer finance apps."
By comparison, and as noted above, the news release announcing its $40 million Series B funding shows that Atomic now works with
- 450+ unique payroll providers,
- 70+ financial institutions and partners, and
- 12 of the largest FinTech firms in the world.
In other words, since October it has added one big FinTech firm to its list of clients and increased its number of financial institutions and partners by roughly 75%.
However, what was not included in its October 2021 news release was any disclosure of payroll providers as Atomic clients, yet this newest announcement says it has over 450 such firms in its stable of clientele today.
So what does this all mean, impact-wise, for Atomic?
Well ... it's hard to know for sure.
But there are two comparable figures shared first in Atomic's October news release and then in its March release, and those figures relate to the number of consumers reached with Atomic's services.
Atomic's October press release said its services "... reach(ed) more than 1.5 million unique consumers a month (through its partners and clients)."
In contrast, Atomic's March news release says its services were "... reaching 125 million workers (at the end of 2021)."
To be clear, as you parse the language between the two announcements, it may not be an exact Apples to Apples comparison.
But from a growth rate standpoint, the way I read it,
The number of consumers Atomic's platform can reach jumped to 125 million workers up from 1.5 million workers in JUST THREE MONTHS.
In other words,
That's a Growth Rate of 83X in approximately 90 days!!! 🤯 🤯 🤯
Additionally, as of the end of 2021, 17.5 million consumers "... (had) entered an Atomic workflow ..." (aka, they had signed-up using a FinTech service powered by Atomic).
If I'm right (and I suspect I am), Atomic's investors were probably begging them to accept their investment dollars.
And why not? A growth rate of 8,300% is mind-numbing. Period.
But to do so in roughly 90 days? SHUT-UP!
To be clear, if I am wildly misreading its two news releases, I apologize.
But when I re-read the specific language of the two announcements and add that to the five-month turnaround for a $40 million funding round, I can only come up with one conclusion:
Atomic's growth rate is explosive.
It's that simple.
AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:
For reference sake, here's a link to our mid-October story – "FinTech Atomic FI Closes $22 Million Series A Round of Funding."
