A month after canceling its SPAC deal, Chicago startup Kin Insurance is raising new funding as it prepares to bring its home insurance product to more states.
Kin said Tuesday that it raised $82 million in new funding led by QED Investors. It's the first close of what will be a $100 million Series D round for the startup, the company said.
Kin has now raised $215 million to date.
Founded in 2016, Kin has built a direct-to-consumer home insurance business that specializes in insuring homes that are impacted by severe weather events. It currently operates in Florida, Louisiana and California, with plans to enter additional states.
Kin says it's able to make home insurance more convenient and affordable for those high-risk homes by cutting out administrative costs and outside agents. Kin's platform allows it to make underwriting decisions quickly based on data from satellite images, public records and other sources.
Kin previously announced plans to go public through a SPAC deal that would have valued the company at more than $1 billion, but in January it canceled those plans, citing unfavorable market conditions. The startup's CEO Sean Harper said in a statement that it may reexamine a public listing again in the future.
"We have a bright future ahead of us — one that will involve accessing the public markets when the time is appropriate," he said at the time.
Kin said it will use the new funding to add to its team and help expand to additional markets. Other investors in the round include Commerce Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd., Alpha Edison, Allegis NL Capital, Avanta Ventures, August Capital, Geodesic Capital and PROOF.VC.
