FIS Accelerator Alumni, Alto Raises $2.8 Million Seed Round

Posted on March 7, 2019
Share via

Alto is the Exclusive IRA Partner for AngelList, the Leading Platform for Startup Investments.

NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 06, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alto, a technology platform that makes it simple for investors to add alternative assets to their IRAs, today announced that it raised a $2.8 million seed round to expand its offering and integrate additional investment platform partners. This brings Alto’s total funding raised to $3.8 million. Investors include Jake Gibson, co-founder of NerdWallet, Foundation Capital, Sequoia’s Scout Fund, Amplify.LA, and First Check and Green D Funds.

The Alternative IRA™ from Alto (AltoIRA) is an individual retirement account that gives investors the freedom to invest in alternative assets like startups, private companies, real estate, loans, and digital currencies, either directly or through one of Alto’s investment platform partners, like AngelList.

According to the Investment Company Institute (ICI), Americans have more than $28 trillion of assets in retirement accounts including $9 trillion in IRAs. And, while it has always been allowed to invest in alternatives with an IRA, only about one percent of IRA assets are invested that way.

The reasons that more investors should consider alternatives in their IRAs are clear:

  • The rise of index-based investing has made it difficult to achieve above-market returns.

  • Decades of experience and market analysis demonstrate the value of adding sources of non-correlated returns to portfolios.

  • Many fast-growth companies which would typically move to the public markets are remaining private longer due to a surplus of private capital.

  • The potential for significant returns in alternatives are further enhanced by the tax advantages of IRAs, particularly Roth IRAs in which returns are not taxed at all.

  • By definition, IRAs are long-term investment accounts, and this fits the liquidity characteristics of most alternatives, such as startups, real estate, and lending.