Why We Invested in Kudos
We are excited to share that Kudos recently raised $10M in Series A funding, led by QED Investors. With this most recent round of funding, Kudos plans to roll out various new services that will augment its quickly evolving Smart Wallet product. Chingona Ventures invested in Kudos’ pre-seed round in 2021.
The ordinary American tends to have multiple credit cards in their wallets, but not a lot of cash to spare. In fact, 82% of U.S. adults have at least one credit card, and the average American has three. However, finding the right credit card can involve a lot of independent research and, on top of that, keeping track of rewards and offers presents even more of a challenge.
In comes Kudos.
Kudos is a free browser extension that houses all of a user’s credit cards via its Smart Wallet technology. The platform automatically calculates card rewards and benefits in order to pick and autofill the best card for a purchase, so users can get the most out of their cards when shopping online. In addition, Kudos has the capability to match credit card rewards on purchases with over 15,000 merchant partners through its free rewards program, Kudos Boost.
Kudos was founded in 2021 by Tikue Anazodo and Ahmad Ismail, long-time friends and former colleagues who met while working as product leads at Google and Affirm. During their time at both companies, Kudos’ CEO, Tikue, led the launch of Google Pay’s partnership with Shopify — scaling its expansion to 300,000 merchants — and Affirm’s partnership with Amazon. While Kudos was pre-product and pre-revenue at the time of our investment, we gained conviction in the founding team given their deep expertise in product management and fintech. In addition, we were excited about Kudos’ vision to help people maximize financial outcomes by optimizing rewards.
Since our initial investment, Kudos has shown exemplary growth in its business, user base, and product. Following its pre-seed round, Kudos successfully launched its browser extension on Chrome, Safari, and Edge. Later, alongside the announcement of its $7M seed round, the company officially released its mobile browser extension and app. Today, after growing its user base by more than 80x in 2023, Kudos now serves over 200,000 users and supports more than 3,000 credit cards. Plus, Kudos has proven its efficacy in helping users optimize rewards, with its customers earning an average of over $750 back annually. The company was also recently featured in Forbes Fintech 50 2024 as one of only six consumer fintech companies included in the list.
Over the past few years, Kudos has also rolled out product features complementary to its flagship Smart Wallet offering. For example, the company released a card explorer tool, coined Dream Wallet, that matches a user to new credit cards based upon certain characteristics and spending habits. More recently, Kudos launched MariaGPT, an AI-powered personalized assistant to answer all credit card-related questions through the Kudos mobile app.
At Chingona Ventures, we are excited about Kudos’ consumer-centric approach to helping individuals access and maximize credit card rewards. We are thrilled to have Kudos as part of our robust portfolio of fintech investments, including companies such as Finix, Scout, and SUMA Wealth. More than two years after our investment, we continue to have high conviction in the company as it has maintained a lean team of 15 full-time employees, developed and launched a multi-feature product, and efficiently grown its user base.
We would like to extend our congratulations to Tikue, Ahmad, and the entire team at Kudos on a successful Series A raise! We look forward to supporting Kudos as it aims to make the online checkout experience both delightful and rewarding for its users. To discover new credit cards and maximize your rewards, visit www.joinkudos.com to learn more or download the browser extension and app today!
