Kudos offers an AI-powered smart wallet available as an app and browser extension that recommends the right credit card, optimizes payments, and surfaces personalized merchant offers. Its product suite includes MariaGPT (an AI card-discovery tool indexing over 3,000 cards), Dream Wallet for personalized recommendations, and Kudos Boost which delivers extra cash-back across more than 15,000 partner brands and retailers. The company grew from 1,000 beta testers to 200,000 registered users and reports annualized checkout gross merchandise volume north of $200 million. Co‑founders Tikue Anazodo and Ahmad Ismail built Kudos after working together at Google and Affirm, and the team remains lean at 14 employees. Management says the company is still in the early stages of revenue generation. Kudos plans to deploy new funding into additional AI-powered services for its smart wallet and expand MariaGPT into a general-purpose personal finance assistant and a portal that lets members book flights with points. Kudos offers a free Chrome extension and mobile wallet that holds over 3,000 cards, calculates rewards and benefits for each purchase, and recommends the optimal card — including store cards — and helps users apply. The product includes an autofill experience (including CVV) across over 1 million sites and is positioned to be ubiquitous rather than reliant on merchant integrations. The company generates revenue from affiliate fees when consumers complete card applications and from merchant cash-back rewards, which it shares with users. Founders Tikue Anazodo and Ahmad Ismail previously led product at Google and Affirm and built the product from that consumer-payments experience. Kudos has been in beta for three months, intentionally had no waitlist, and is now launching its mobile and desktop browser extension and app. The company reports 36% month-over-month growth and 90% retention, plans to add a cash-back feature across more than 12,000 merchant partners this holiday season, and will grow its team of 11 while focusing the next six months on product improvements and customer acquisition.

Total raised

$17M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

May 2024