WealthTech Platform Range Closes $12 Million Series A Led by Google’s Gradient Ventures

Fahad Hassan

Washington, D.C.-based Range, which is developing an AI-based WealthTech platform with the goal of rendering human financial planners obsolete, has raised $12 million in Series A funding round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund.

Other investors included Expa, Uber co-founder Garrett Camp’s venture fund; New York-based Red Sea Ventures; San Francisco-based 8-bit Capital. Angel investors backing the venture included Square co-founder Randy Reddig, Forward Health founder Adrian Aoun, Duolingo co-founder Severin Hacker and Convoy co-founder Dan Lewis.

“We started this company to help families better manage their wealth,” said Range co-founder and CEO Fahad Hassan, a Johns Hopkins alum and serial entrepreneur.

To Serve Millennials

“With our new investors and their experience in AI, we believe this partnership and financing will allow us to assist families during unprecedented times of economic change and uncertainty,” he said. “Our products will allow everyone to access the advice and tools typically only available to the wealthy.”

Hassan is a serial entrepreneur. He sold his first startup Daylert to Intelliworks, a learning platform. He also previously founded Convoy, a financial advisory firm, and Always Prepped, a venture-funded firm that was acquired by Alma in 2015. Hassan also held an executive position at Activant.

In the midst of Covid-19, Hassan co-founded Range to solve a “very simple problem: Financial management for my growing millennial family.” Hassan said he and his wife, a professional with her own career and money, wanted to “openly share all our finances and manage everything together — in one place.”

But “unfortunately, nothing on the web allowed us to do this with the speed and analytical power of AI along with the quality wisdom of veteran financial advisors that understood us deeply,” he wrote. “So we started Range to solve these problems not just for us — but everyone at an affordable price.” Hassan’s co-founder at Range is former Amazon engineer David Cusatis, who interned at Hassan’s startup Always Prepped.

Still Learning

Range is training its AI system to offer wealth management tips on investment, taxes, estate and retirement planning, and insurance. It still has some rough edges, and likely needs to learn even more. Currently, human financial planners use the AI system as an aid to advise customers but eventually Range expects that the robotic system will run independently, bringing the efficiencies expected by millennials. Range’s goal is to make that “wealth advisor a computer,” Hassan told Business Insider. That will happen, “it’s just a matter of when, not if,” he added.

Gradient Ventures, established by Google in 2017, has made nearly 200 portfolio investments and exited over 20.

“The team at Range is determined to leverage new technologies, specifically AI and large-language models, to give families more control and visibility into their financial future,” said Darian Shirazi, general partner at Gradient Ventures, who will join Range’s board of directors.