Citi Ventures is looking at agentic AI startups as a compelling area for investment. 

Agentic AI “could reimagine workflows across compliance, onboarding, payments, wealth management and more,” Arvind Purushotham, global head of Citi Ventures, told Bank Automation News. 

The venture capital arm of $1.8 trillion Citi announced an undisclosed investment in agentic AI-powered credit data and payments platform Spinwheel on Sept. 4.

“When evaluating our investment in Spinwheel, we saw it as a powerful example of how an AI-driven platform can transform financial services by making consumer credit data and payments more intelligent and accessible,” Purushotham said. 

The September investment follows a $30 million series A funding round led by F-Prime and a May 2021 $11 million round led by QED Investors, according to Crunchbase. 

“The capital from both our series A and the Citi Ventures strategic investment will accelerate development of our agentic AI platform, expand data sets and product offerings and scale Spinwheel’s go-to-market and engineering team,” Spinwheel Chief Executive Tomas Campos told BAN. 

The platform has more than 15 million users and over 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, Campos said. Spinwheel clients include Monarch, Nerdwallet and Fika Ventures. 

Recent investments

The investment is just one of Citi Venture’s recent moves. According to Crunchbase, the CVC has recently participated in the following funding rounds: 

• $18.8 million on Sept. 17 into short-term financing fintech Defacto; 

• $60 million on Aug. 18 into IVIX, a fintech using AI to transform public data into insights to fight financial crime; and 

• $4.5 million on July 8 into OneText, a company that helps individuals and companies purchase goods and services via text. 

Check out our exclusive new bank industry data here.