Investment community continues its “Love Affair” with Utah as over $750MM pours into Utah firms in the first two weeks of 2021
The headline is straightforward; the subhead, however, points to a more nuanced and exciting story. More on that below.
To begin … #Lehi-based MX has raised $300 million in a “Series C” round of #funding, which places the #valuation for the fintech at $1.9 billion.
According to Crunchbase, MX has now raised $475MM in total funding since its founding in 2010.
The company specializes in helping banks and other financial institutions build a better “Money eXperience” with its customers. And to date, those efforts appear to be working as MX-enabled clients — banks, credit unions, #fintechs, and tech firms — have a combined audience of over 200 million people.
According to the company news release, the $300MM funding round was led by a $150 million investment from TPG Growth with additional participation from new and existing investors including CapitalG, Geodesic Capital, Greycroft, Cota Capital, Canapi Ventures, Digital Garage, Point72 Ventures, and Salt Lake City-based Pelion Venture Partners, along with Regions Financial Corp.
So kudos to the entire MX team.
The Rest of the Story
What the MX press release doesn’t say is that it’s the fourth #Utah-based #business to land a nine-figure investment in the first two weeks of 2021.
Specifically, four Utah firms have raised a combined total of $753MM in investment dollars in the first half of January. 🤯🤯🤯
And for those of you who may not have been tracking such things for the past decade or two (or three), in the not too distant past, Utah firms might have been lucky to attract that level of capital in six months, let alone in eight business days.
First up was Draper-based fintech, Divvy, which announced on January 5 it had closed a $165MM Series D round of funding (which gave it a $1.6B valuation).
For the uninformed, Divvy positions itself as having
The No. 1 corporate card & expense management platform.
{NOTE: You can learn more about the details surrounding the Divvy fundraising round here.}
ON THE SAME DAY, Lehi-based SimpleNexus also announced it had raised money; in this instance, it was ONLY$108MM via a Series B round of funding.
Only?!?!?! 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
SimpleNexus has created a service to help bring financial professionals, real estate professionals and current/potential homeowners onto one digital mortgage platform.
Its funding was led by VC and private equity firm, Insight Capital.
{NOTE: You can learn more about the details surrounding the SimpleNexus fundraising round here.}
Then just two days later, Lehi-based WeLink announced it had secured $185MM in funding to help it continue to build-out its 5G-based, wireless mesh-network to deliver high-speed internet connectivity to both residential and business customers.
WeLink has already begun deployment in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the new capital will help it begin expansion into nine additional markets.
The $185MM came from Digital Alpha, a Henderson, Nevada-based private equity firm with a focus on digital infrastructure and services, and it has a strategic collaboration agreement with Cisco Systems.
{NOTE: You can learn more about the details surrounding the WeLink fundraising round here.}
In Conclusion
#Covid19 and presidential inauguration, notwithstanding, I see nothing on the horizon that suggests any slowdown in the Utah economy in the near term.
What do you think?
NOTE: This article was originally published by Deseret Business Watch. A few minor editorial changes have been made to this version vs. the original to better match the current Silicon Slopes writing style.
