Acorns

A tech-driven financial services company, Acorns currently serves 8.2 million customers and has over $3 billion in assets under management. The eight-year-old California-based company is dedicated to teaching financial literacy to the up-and-coming and giving Americans the tools to save and invest, in an effort to close the country's wealth gap. The company's signature innovation is a setting on its mobile app that allows customers to automatically round up purchases up to the nearest dollar amount, and then invest that spare change in a low-cost, diversified portfolio of exchange-traded funds. With the pandemic heightening the importance of having an emergency fund, Acorns hopes that its app will make it easier for Americans to save money in preparation for future hardships. In June, the company launched Acorns Early, which allows parents to automatically invest in a similar investment account for their children, starting as early as birth. Acorns hopes to have that program reach one million children in the next year. The start-up raised $105 million in its 2019 Series E, giving it an $860 million valuation.