Plutus, a Seattle-area fintech startup founded last year, raised $1.2 million to help fuel growth of its investing marketplace.
The company aims to give everyday investors access to strategies traditionally used by hedge funds and ultra-wealthy clients. Plutus acts as an advisory marketplace between individual investors and providers such as Citrini Research. It lets users browse curated, thematic portfolios from independent research providers, select one that fits their goals, and replicate it automatically in their own brokerage accounts.
Unlike passive ETFs or mutual funds, the portfolios are designed for automated rebalancing and potential tax advantages. Plutus takes a cut of subscription fees set by each portfolio provider.
Plutus CEO Shashank Chiranewala said the company recently received its Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) license from the SEC and is starting to onboard customers on its waitlist.
Chiranewala, a former investment banker and program manager at Microsoft and Meta, co-founded Plutus with Mitren Chinoy, a former senior software engineer at Snowflake and Microsoft. The pair previously started and sold digital form startup Formloge last year for an undisclosed sum.
Investors in the new round include existing customers, Bay Area VC firm Rocketship, and Visse Capital, a multi-family office based in Madrid.
“We are proud to support the team as they build the infrastructure to democratize institutional-grade portfolio management and power the next generation of wealth creation,” Sailesh Ramakrishnan, managing partner at Rocketship, said in a statement.
Plutus has less than ten employees and is hiring. It recently moved into a new office in Kirkland, Wash.
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