Fintech startup Alpaca grabs $6 mln

Silicon Valley-based Alpaca, a fintech startup, has secured $6 million in funding. The investors included Spark Capital and Social Leverage.

PRESS RELEASE

San Mateo, CA – Nov. 11, 2019 – Alpaca, a Silicon Valley based developer-first API stock broker, has raised a round of funding from the same investors who were early backers of other successful wealth tech companies Robinhood, Wealthfront, Wealthsimple, and eToro.

The fintech startup, a FINRA registered broker-dealer, aims to make commission-free trading widely available through various types of applications globally. Unlike existing broker-dealers seeking to drive consumers to web and mobile destinations of their own, Alpaca is focused on offering developers the opportunity to easily integrate trading within their own applications.

The fintech startup, a FINRA registered broker-dealer, also announced it has surpassed $1 billion in transactions in 12 months, reaching this milestone faster than any other stock brokers. The company aims to make commission-free trading widely available through various types of applications globally. And the company said it has completed an integration of it’s commission free stock trading platform with TradingView, the largest investing community on the web, with more than 11 million active traders and investors per month sharing ideas, providing feedback and charting stocks, forex, futures, and cryptocurrencies.

“We are truly honored to be backed by the leading fintech investors and founders of our fellow YC companies to accelerate the ubiquity of commission-free stock investing through Alpaca’s API“, said Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO and Co-founder of Alpaca. “Our developer-friendly trading API is now positioned to be a critically important middleware solution for those seeking to easily and quickly add investment products to their apps, websites and other platforms.”

“Alpaca’s developer first approach has helped the company achieve groundbreaking growth in only the company’s first year of operations,” said Santo Politi of Spark Capital. “As the company grows so will the portfolio of investment products that the company will be able to offer to the developer community.”

Aside from Spark Capital and Social Leverage, some of the most respected fintech and developer-product investment firms in the world including Portag3, Y Combinator, Fathom Capital, and Zillionize, also participated in this round of funding.

Following the success of Robinhood’s commission-free offering, many major online brokers, such as TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and ETrade, have recently made a move to provide commission-free trading. Alpaca’s market entry accelerates the industry’s movement towards commission-free trading as it enables any developer to easily integrate the feature onto their applications.

“For example, Alpaca is currently integrated with Slack, so users using Slack can invest and monitor their investments without ever leaving the platform,” said Yokokawa.

Alpaca’s path to growth and deployment is similar to the developer-first focus that led to the legacy business disruption from both Stripe and Twilio.
The company believes the rise of Super Apps could be instrumental in helping it realize its vision of providing developers with unparalleled access to various investment products. Many communication and marketplace apps in Asia are already building out their app ecosystem with various financial services in an effort to drive even greater user engagement and to increase monetization opportunities. For example, China’s Super App WeChat now has more than 1 billion monthly active users and is growing quickly.

“We’re going to be laser focused on ensuring Alpaca is the first choice for developers building the products of the future,” Yokokawa said.

About Alpaca
Alpaca is a Silicon Valley based developer-first API stock brokerage that modularizes the world’s investment activities. The company’s products enable anyone to build and connect applications and algorithms to buy and sell stocks with zero commissions. The company is backed by some of the top investors in the industry globally including Spark Capital, Social Leverage, Y Combinator, and Portag3. Securities are offered through Alpaca Securities LLC.