Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator Adds Two Early Stage Companies to Portfolio

Alpharank and Amicus.io offer innovative solutions for financial services in the areas of data and charitable giving

Wells Fargo & Company WFC announced today two early stage companies – Alpharank and Amicus.io – as the latest startups to join the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator. The program also recently doubled the amount of funding companies are eligible to receive, bringing the total potential investment to $1 million per company.

"Collaboration with outside companies plays a critical role in how we will serve our customers and support team members in the future," said Bipin Sahni, head of innovation R&D in the Innovation Group at Wells Fargo. "We're committed to continued expansion of the accelerator program as we transform the way the bank reimagines the customer experience."

Wells Fargo began the accelerator – a virtual, non-exclusive six-month program – nearly four years ago to advance exploration in emerging technologies such as analytics, cybersecurity, payments, artificial intelligence and others, in pursuit of breakthroughs for financial services. Companies are eligible to receive funding, along with guidance from Wells Fargo business and technology leaders in refining the launch of their ideas. To date, the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator has received nearly 1,800 applications from innovative companies in more than 50 countries and now has 19 companies in its portfolio. Applications can be submitted throughout the year at www.wellsfargo.com/accelerator.

Latest Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator Companies:

• Alpharank (Redwood Shores, Calif.) builds Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that help companies uncover how customers influence each other's behavior. The startup uses a financial institution's anonymized historical transaction data to build a customer graph enriched with transactional attributes.
  
  "We are thrilled to be part of the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator as we continue our mission to humanize transactional data to help financial institutions build stronger connections in their communities," said Brian Ley, Alpharank CEO and founder. "Word of mouth is often one of the most important components of a company's client attraction and retention strategy, and we see enormous potential for the application of our technology in the financial space."
• Amicus.io (Charlotte, N.C.) creates a modern, digital platform that supports charitable giving by clients of financial institutions. It has designed the platform from the ground up to integrate easily with existing systems and business processes, bringing charitable giving to products banks already offer, such as online banking, roundups, peer-to-peer payment systems, and donor advised funds.
  
  "Americans today are giving to charity in record numbers, and we see a clear opportunity to create an experience that more easily allows people to align their financial actions with their values," said Cornelis Hoekstra, CEO of Amicus.io. "Joining the Wells Fargo Startup Accelerator gives us a big opportunity to examine new ways to weave generosity into the fabric of customers' financial lives."

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company WFC is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo's vision is to satisfy our customers' financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through 8,200 locations, 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 42 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 265,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 25 on Fortune's 2017 rankings of America's largest corporations. News, insights and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.

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