Last year, banking disruptor Stephen Bohanon predicted that Alkami’s next yearly milestone would be 10 million contracted users and $100 million in revenue. Fast forward and the fast-growing fintech has done it: 2020 brought in nearly 10 million digital users and more than $130 million of annual recurring revenue. Add to that a $140 million funding round that puts Alkami’s total funding upwards of $400 million.
STARTUP
Banking Disruptor
Stephen Bohanon
Competing against giants like Fiserv, Plano’s Alkami has grown to more than 400 employees since its 2009 founding by supplying technology that large U.S. banks and credit unions use to serve their customers digitally.
“Ultimately, everyone will go to electronic delivery” of financial services, predicted Stephen Bohanon, the founder who oversees Alkami’s product direction, strategy, and sales efforts, in a Venture Dallas panel in 2019.
At the time, Cypress Growth Capital’s Vic Thapar, noted that Alkami was “somewhat under the radar in Dallas-Fort Worth.” But, he noted: “Their story shows that companies approaching unicorn status can be based in Dallas-Fort Worth.”
So it would seem.
Alkami’s under-the-radar status has changed—and rapidly. Today, the company is reported to be planning for an IPO later this year, per Reuters. Alkami Technology has picked Goldman Sachs Group Inc to lead preparations for the initial public offering that could value the fintech at $3 billion.
The company’s financing continued to fuel its growth in 2020, during a time when many were turning to digital solutions amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the fast-growing startup is serving some 160 financial institutions, according to its website.
Bohanon and CEO Mike Hansen have built an intentional workplace culture of Alkamists in Plano around the idea that business innovation is the focus of the human capacity to create or improve products, solutions, and business models. The company’s cloud-based solutions are designed to modernize how financial institutions do business and users do banking, and it’s also earned some of the highest app store ratings in digital banking.
Bohanon’s vision for the game-changing fintech have been fueled by his unwavering belief in the product—and the market’s need for a modern digital banking platform. The company, now headquartered at Granite Park in Plano where it doubled its footprint in 2018, has come a long way in a short time since its founding in a makeshift office over a Coldstone Creamery.
Bohanon was featured in Dallas Innovates’ Future 50 in Dallas-Fort Worth in the 2021 edition of our annual magazine.
A version of this story was originally published in Dallas Innovates 2021: The Resilience Issue.
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R E A D N E X T
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“For us, the alchemy is transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary,” says Adrianne Court, Alkami's Chief Human Resource Officer.
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Alkami, which builds digital online and mobile banking solutions for credit unions and banks, has more than 10M contracted users on its platform. Here's how resilience has helped Alkamists and the company thrive during these remarkable and unprecedented times. Alkami also talks about its partnership with Per Scholas, an organization that serves as a catalyst for individual resiliency.
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The raise puts Alkami's total funding at more than $400 million. It comes at a time when the cloud-based digital banking solutions provider is nearing 10 million digital users.
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The Series D funding supports team expansion across the financial tech firm, as well as R&D and the company’s independency.
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The fast-growing Plano-based company, which last year raised $70 million in a Series D round, has used its funding to invest in innovation, people, and services.
