Serial entrepreneur Yuval Brisker, who founded and exited TOA Technologies in Beachwood, Ohio, has raised $70 million — the largest amount yet — for his latest company, Alviere.
Based in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Alviere has created an embedded finance platform called The Hive that enables brands to deliver financial products such as checking accounts and debit cards to their customers and employees.
Alviere will use its new capital to accelerate its go-to-market plans and expand beyond North America to Europe and Latin America, the company said in a press release.
"The embedded finance revolution is shifting the face of banking, lending and insurance away from traditional centralized big players to new entrants, led by established consumer brands and enterprises," said Omry Ben David, general partner at Viola Ventures, which is one of Alviere's investors, in the release.
"We partnered with Alviere because we believe in the immense market potential of this emerging market,” Ben David said.
In April, Alviere closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Viola Ventures and Viola Fintech, with participation from investors including CommerzVentures, Mitsubishi Capital Corp., Wix.com Capital (NYSE: WIX), Draper Triangle Ventures, Cross River Bank Capital and CERCA Partners, according to the press release.
Because of the momentum caused by clients' adoption of The Hive, Alviere quickly added another $50 million investment from prominent institutional fintech investors such as Opera Tech Ventures, the venture capital arm of BNP Paribas and included existing investors Viola Ventures, Viola Fintech and CommerzVentures and Cleveland-based North Coast Ventures, the company said.
North Coast Ventures invested "seven figures" in Alviere's latest investment round, said Todd Federman, who is that firm's managing director.
"This is right in the sweet spot of North Coast’s investment thesis, which is business-to-business software and solving big global problems with software," Federman said.
North Coast Ventures, then called the North Coast Angel Fund, and Cleveland venture developer JumpStart Inc. invested in Alviere's seed round in 2018, according to a JumpStart release.
At that time, Alviere was called Mezu.
Alviere was founded by Brisker, who sold his previous startup, TOA Technologies, to Oracle Corp. in 2014 in one of Ohio's largest venture capital-backed exits, at the time, JumpStart said.
Brisker worked at Oracle for two years to integrate his former company and then turned his efforts to launching Mezu with his co-founder and former TOA employee, Pedro Silva, the local venture developer said.
Using Alviere's embedded finance services can be a fast, low-risk and low-friction way for a company to add revenue streams.
"Our embedded finance solution can easily and quickly deliver ‘everything personal finance’ to your customers, deepening customer relationships and insights while dramatically increasing bottom-line revenue," said Brisker.
