Now, global FinTech funding has increased over the last half decade, albeit with some measure of quarter by quarter variability. As hundreds and hundreds of FinTech companies have received those funds, underlying valuation levels of some of the best-known players has increased a pace. A number of the ones we've talked about before like Betterment and Wealthfront along with others like Personal Capital in the Robo-Advisory space have already gone through late stage venture capital rounds going through series E and series F, with substantial valuations. For example, Betterment closed around of about $70 million in mid 2017 with the post-money valuation of approximately $800 million. It's an eye popping number. What makes it even more eye popping is the amount of assets on which those underlying fees were presumably calculated. If you look at the graph in front of you, you'll see that in the summer of 2017, Betterment might have had something like $10 billion give or take. The valuation implied by the flows from fees on $10 billion is really, really very, very rich by normal valuation metrics even in technology related areas. In other words, the market must be expecting, presuming efficiency of the market, some rapid expansion of the market and of sales for the firm. We see similar patterns for Wealthfront, which reportedly did around in 2014 at $700 million. Recently raising $75 million, although the post-money valuation was as of this recording unavailable. Personal Capital as well raised something like $40 million recently, having previously raised $75 million in 2016 at a post-money valuation of $500 million. At significantly lower levels of assets under management once again under which fees are presumably calculated in cash flows derive fund from. To summarize, it looks like the Robo-Advisory space not only is expanding. It's hot and valuations are following the money. So I mentioned just a moment ago that many believe Vanguard is operating the world's largest Robo at around a $150 to $120 billion in assets under management. It's interesting to know that something like six months in advance of that level, it reported being at about $100 billion. If that's the case, then Vanguard must be raising something like $5 billion a month in its Robo practice. The top players as of the second half of 2018 have been reported to be Vanguard, followed by Schwab Intelligent Portfolio Group at $27 billion followed then by Betterment, which at that point reported $13.5 billion, by Wealthfront over $10 billion, and then E-Trade, Wealthsimple, FutureAdvisor, Acorns, Rebalance, and Fidelity. What we see is a mix of independence again like Betterment and Wealthfront. Although again, we mentioned that some Robos have arrangements with firms. For example, Fidelity controls much of Betterment order flows and earns referral fees. It's also well known that City owns some proportion of Betterment. But we also see traditional firms like Vanguard, by way of asset managers; buy-side asset managers. We see traditional brokerage firms like Schwab, a discount broker, coming in. We see some interesting disruptors, like Acorns, which has a vast customer pace as part of it. The largest RoboAdvisors buy assets includes a broad cross-section of investment players a cross section in diversity of which we see reflected elsewhere in FinTech. A look at a broad cross-section of RoboAdvisors reveals some pretty interesting characteristics. For example, if you compare Acorns to Betterment or FutureAdvisor or the Schwab Intelligent Portfolio platform or T Rowe Price's active portfolios or Vanguard or Wealthfront's offerings, you see a different approaches, different numbers, and characters of potential clients, and different assets under management. Take for example, Acorns versus Wealthfront. We've already talked about Wealthfront. Acorns follows what's called a roundup approach motivated by behavioral finance and investor psychology, focusing on helping customers round up their purchases. So for example, if you buy a good or service using a linked debit card or credit card for say $1.75, the service will round up your purchase to $2, take the extra $0.25 and invest it in a Robo style portfolio. They reported, as of December 2018, approximately $1.1 billion in assets across over two million clients. By comparison, Wealthfront reported over $11 billion, almost $11.5 billion, over 2,000 to 21,000 clients. Different approaches, different numbers of clients. One taking a more traditional asset allocation approach, Wealthfront, others using behavioral finance like Acorns as a motivator, still very popular and still very interesting from a FinTech perspective.
