Bud Financial has landed U.S. venture backing, and it came from the banks themselves.
BankTech Ventures, a venture firm backed by more than 125 small and midsize banks, has invested in Bud, a London-based data company that calls itself the “customer intelligence layer” for banks. Terms were not disclosed.
The investment comes as Jack Henry rolls out native transaction enrichment powered by Bud, putting the company inside one of the largest community bank cores.
Bud takes a bank’s existing data, enriches and organizes it into a single view of each customer, and uses that view to spot which products fit which customers. It then pushes those opportunities to digital banking, contact centers, relationship managers, and branches.
“Banks don’t need to tear out their core to compete in an AI-first world,” Edward Maslaveckas, Bud’s co-founder and CEO, said in a press release. “They need a layer that turns the data they already have into intelligence. … Your data already knows where the best opportunities are. Bud helps you act on it.”
Banks “are being rebuilt from the inside out to meet what the modern customer expects,” said Carey Ransom, managing director at BankTech Ventures. “Bud is a key enabler of that rebuild and rethinking,” he said.