Dive Brief:
- JPMorgan Chase has agreed to buy Aumni, a Salt Lake City-based investment analytics fintech, the bank announced Wednesday.
- The deal, which is expected to close by June, marks the latest fintech purchase for the $3.7 trillion-asset bank, which is continuing an acquisition spree it accelerated in 2021.
- JPMorgan did not disclose the value of the deal, but Aumni was worth $232 million after its latest funding round in 2021, according to Pitchbook. That’s in line with what the bank will pay, a source with knowledge of the transaction told CNBC.
Dive Insight:
JPMorgan is bolstering its investments in services that cater to early-stage private firms.
The bank last year launched Capital Connect, a platform that aims to pair startup founders with venture-capital investors. JPMorgan last year also acquired Global Shares, a cloud-based provider of share plan management software.
Aumni tracks and analyzes legal and economic terms underpinning growth-stage private-market transactions.
JPMorgan first invested in the startup in 2021, and that deal helped the bank realize the two firms shared synergies of providing more transparency to private markets, Michael Elanjian, JPMorgan’s head of digital investment banking and digital private markets, said in a statement.
“Aumni’s market-leading data structuring and portfolio monitoring solutions, combined with the capital raising and cap table management services of Capital Connect and Global Shares, further enhances the ecosystem of digital solutions that J.P. Morgan is building for companies and investors in both growth and later-stage private markets,” Elanjian said.
Aumni has data on nearly 18,000 portfolio companies valued at $3.6 trillion, the startup’s CEO, Tony Lewis, told CNBC. The fintech charges a yearly subscription fee based on assets under management and number of companies tracked, he said.
Wednesday’s deal follows up on a 2020 pledge from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon that the bank would be “much more aggressive with acquisitions across the board.”
But regulations prohibit the bank from acquiring additional U.S.-based deposit-taking institutions because it already holds more than 10% of U.S. deposits. So it has taken to investing in businesses that are banking-adjacent — or outside banking entirely.
JPMorgan made more than 30 acquisitions in 2021, Reuters reported. That includes buying overseas entities such as British digital wealth management platform Nutmeg and acquiring significant stakes in the Greek fintech Viva Wallet and the Brazilian digital bank C6.
But the bank has also bought businesses that are outside banking entirely — with varying success. JPMorgan in September 2021 bought the restaurant platform The Infatuation, which owns the Zagat guidebook.
In the same month, it also acquired the college financial planning platform Frank. The bank shut down that platform in January and is embroiled in a legal battle with Frank’s founder, Charlie Javice. JPMorgan alleges Javice vastly exaggerated Frank’s customer base and created fake student accounts to back up her claims.
Javice, for her part, counter-sued, alleging the bank fired her to avoid paying her a $20 million retention bonus.
