Digital investing platform Yieldstreet has secured $100 million in a Series C funding round led by Tarsadia Investments.
The New York City-based company will use the funding to grow its user base, develop new products, expand internationally and go after strategic acquisitions, according to a news release.
Investors such as Kingfisher Investment, Top Tier Capital Partners and Gaingels also joined the round, along with Edison Partners, Soros Fund Management, Greenspring Associates, Raine Ventures, Greycroft and Expansion Venture Capital.
Through its digital platform Yieldstreet provides access to alternative asset classes such as real estate, commercial, consumer, art and others. Founded in 2015, the company has funded more than $1.9 billion of investments. Yieldstreet also has offices in Brazil, Greece and Malta.
The funding round comes on the heels of some spectacular growth for Yieldstreet, the company saw investment requests and new investors rise 250% through May this year over 2020, and new investors currently surpassing all of 2020.
Michael Weisz, Founder, President and CIO of Yieldstreet told FinLedger that the 60/40 investment model is broken and that people from all degrees of wealth are inefficiently making their money work for them.
“The idea of Yieldstreet came about because I really have a passion to figure out — how do we get millions of people on a road to financial independence?” Weisz said.
The company recently launched its structured notes product which allows structured note portfolios to be delivered to individuals through technology, he said. Structure notes are a multi-trillion dollar asset class, he said.
Although Yieldstreet plans to expand internationally, Weisz wouldn’t elaborate on exactly where the company plans to expand to.
Going forward, Yieldstreet is looking into three types of acquisitions, including acquiring companies that help with user growth, investment products and consolidation. The company has over 100 employees and plans on increasing its headcount by 50% by the year’s end.
“What we’d like to focus on right now is bringing Yieldstreet to millions of people and becoming that household name and direct to consumer. And so you’re going to see us spend a lot of money around consumer acquisition and growth,” he said.
In other recent fintech news, Circle, which builds payments and financial services on public blockchains, has raised $440 million in financing to scale its growth and to drive market expansion, the company announced in a blog post.