Lending Express gets $2.7m in funding – uses AI to match businesses with lenders

The loan-matching company has connected small and medium-sized businesses to over $40m in funding in the United States and Australia.

Lending Express, a New York-based fintech startup, has collected $2.7m in seed funding, the company announced on Tuesday. Lending Express connects small and medium-sized businesses with the suitable lenders using artificial intelligence to find perfect matches.

The investment round was led by Entrée Capital, iAngels, and existing investors. Lending Express intends to use the funds to further develop its loan-matching technology and scale up its operations.

Using AI, Lending Express finds the most relevant lenders for a business and predicts the likelihood for it to receive funding. For lenders, the service is useful because it connects them with the most qualified customers and thus increases the conversion rate from an application to a loan. The service is free for businesses looking for funding.

Eden Amirav, the CEO and co-founder of Lending Express, said in a press release that, as it expands, the company aims to support small and medium-sized businesses in its current markets the US and Australia “and beyond”. Through Lending Express, businesses can find funding products such as unsecured business loans, lines of credit, merchant cash advances and invoice factoring.

“The online alternative finance market is expanding at an incredibly rapid rate, and yet until now, has remained shamefully archaic and rudimentary,” Amirav said.

Lending Express claims to be “the world’s first and only AI-powered marketplace for business loans”. The company has connected businesses to over $40m in funding since it started its operations in the last quarter of 2016. It has served about 55,000 customers and has partnerships with more than 25 lenders and fintech companies.

Mor Assia, a founding partner of the investment platform iAngels, believes that Lending Express will become the global market leader in loan-matching.

“We are proud to be leading this funding round for Lending Express, having proven their model in Australia to become the market leader within a matter of months. Looking at the industry, it is clear that this innovative approach is the future,” she said in a press release.