IceKredit Raises $US33 Million in Series C1 Funding

SHANGHAI, Nov. 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading AI powered platform for business IceKredit announced the closing of its series C1 round of funding, raising US $33 million, led by Guoxin Venture Investment with participation from Guohe Capital, Yunqi Partners, and China Creation Ventures. The funds will be used for expanding IceKredit's development team, investments and acquisitions, and improving its business ecosystem.

Founded in 2015, IceKredit is an AI powered platform providing comprehensive risk mitigation solutions to individuals and financial institutions using artificial intelligence technology and big data.

IceKredit provides financial institutions with end-to-end risk mitigation solutions including anti-fraud and improved credit decisions. IceKredit's key services are its proprietary machine learning algorithms, standard personal and business credit scores, customizable credit risk modeling, and AI powered platform. IceKredit's latest product, backed by their proprietary knowledge storage, modeling, mining, and analytics techniques, is helping financial institutions mitigate credit risks in the business lending space.

The teams have diverse backgrounds and experiences from companies such as ZestFinance, Lending Club, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Capital One, Discover, GE Capital, Barclays, Kabbage and other industry leaders in finance and technology. With support from two AI Labs and two Research & Development Centers, data scientists and engineers have established top-notch risk mitigation solutions utilizing techniques in Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Federated Learning, and Knowledge Graphs. IceKredit has produced 110 software copyrights and 36 patents.

The company's exploration of Federated Learning is at the forefront of the industry. The decision engine built with exceptional computing power uses blockchain, secret sharing, homomorphic encryption, and other technologies to conduct third-party data query and model/rule calculation functionalities, with strong customer privacy protection.

IceKredit has partnerships with hundreds of financial institutions globally. In the United States, domestically, IceKredit has been dedicated to providing service for subprime customers that have not been covered by FICO and other credit bureaus using AI technology, in order to help them get loans with relatively low interest rates. IceKredit's clients include many regional banks, community banks and credit unions. In recent year, IceKredit also entered Southeast Asia market. Their efforts to innovate and transform the finance industry has been recognized by many awards including CB Insights Global Fintech Top 250 for two consecutive times, KPMG China Leading Fintech Companies Top 50 for four consecutive years, Davos Forum China's Top 50 AI, Forbes China's High-growth Gazelle Enterprises.

Lingyun Gu, the founder and chairman of IceKredit, said that as one of the very few AI driven risk mitigation solution providers, when it comes to core products and business models, IceKredit has two principles: First, the company's core technologies will never deviate from artificial intelligence. Second, these technologies will always stem from the real-world business needs of financial institutions and work to serve them.

The representatives of Guoxin Venture Capital believe that the product matrix of IceKredit covers the entire process of the risk mitigation industry; and its development benefits from the fact that consumption is becoming an important driving force for economic growth, the implementation of inclusive financial policies, and the improvements on the financial ecosystem. IceKredit has a strong technical team and has established partnerships with top companies in banking, consumer finance, online finance and other industries. In the future, IceKredit plans to expand its business into more industries such as insurance, trusts, and funds. IceKredit's business plans and strategies are in line with the investment strategies of Guoxin Venture Capital who believes that there is a very promising future for leveraging AI in credit decision.

Vincent Song, an executive director of Guohe Capital, stated, "IceKredit is an extraordinary company that has top-notch technologies and is excellent at producing solutions that meet real-world business needs. We believe that IceKredit will become a leader in the AI space."

Michael Mao, co-founder of Yunqi Partners, believes that there is a promising future in the financial technology space for IceKredit. "As a leading fintech, IceKredit was one of the fintechs Yunqi decided to invest in when Yunqi was founded", he said, "I met Dr. Gu before he founded IceKredit. We had countless discussions about the future of financial technology, and I agreed with Dr. Gu on his unique understanding about combining financial services with technology. So it was not surprising at all that I became IceKredit's angel investor. Despite the increasingly changing environment in the internet finance industry, IceKredit always sticks to their principles. There have been a lot of changes on the finance regulation, so we believe IceKredit will grow exponentially in the coming years.

Wei Zhou, Founding Managing Partner of CCV, stated, "IceKredit is the first company that CCV invested in since its establishment, as the early investor, we are optimistic with Icekredit's technology and product specifications which could enable the traditional financial institutions in their digitalization process. Dr. Lingyun Gu and his team are technology-oriented with comprehensive technological capabilities, and we are very happy to see IceKredit is growing into a leading AI company."

Todd Yuan, an executive director of Touzhong Capital, stated, "Congratulations to IceKredit for completing the Series C1 funding. IceKredit, as a leading third-party AI service provider, has a deep understanding of financial risk management and serves many leading customers based on standardized SaaS products and modular PaaS platform models. Dr. Gu and his team focus on technology only and constantly look to expand into other industries. This is highly in line with our values".

Dr. Lingyun Gu, thinks highly of Touzhong Capital,  which was the exclusive financial consulting firm in this round of funding. He said, "As a leading financial consulting firm, Touzhong Capital has a deep understanding of technology, and great resources in this industry. Touzhong Capital impressed us with their professionalism and capabilities."

SOURCE IceKredit