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Asset management platform GXE has raised $3.3 million in an oversubscribed Series A round that has boosted total capital raised by the Melbourne-based company to $5.3 million since inception in 2020.
The latest round drew participation from US-based fund Second Century Ventures and domestic firms Archangel and Australian Medical Angels.
The proceeds from the capital raise will be used by GXE for software development resources to expand the platform and operational staff to support the fintech’s expanding client base. Among them are MA Financial, Nash Capital, Westpac-backed Reinventure and Glitch Capital.
GXE was founded by Ed Hooper and Andrew Armstrong, the entrepreneurs behind audio management platform Omny Studio which is used by media companies and podcasters to grow their audience, reduce production costs and monetise their content.
Omny Studio was bought by Los Angeles-based digital audio tech and advertising company Triton Digital in 2019.
Through GXE, the entrepreneurs say they are transforming private asset management through a comprehensive all-in-one platform.
GXE’s software enables fund managers, family offices and investment professionals to streamline their operations, improving their efficiency in securities management, investor communications, tax and regulatory compliance.
Hooper came up with the idea for GXE when he experienced the problem himself as an angel investor.
“When I was an angel investor making small investments into various startups and funds, I constantly ran into the same headaches: tracking commitments, chasing down reports, stitching together data from different sources,” he says.
“It became clear that modern fund managers didn’t have great tools to manage admin, reporting, tax, and compliance.
“GXE is a platform that brings all of those things together, to make managing investments in private assets simpler and smarter.”
GXE’s platform supports thousands of investors across more than 250 funds and special purpose vehicles.
“Our customers are fund managers who’re tired of trawling through spreadsheets, emails and disconnected systems to find the information they’re looking for,” says Armstrong.
“We built a way for them to run their operations from a single source of truth. It not only saves them time, it builds trust with LPs (limited partnerships) and unlocks scale for fund managers.”
Second Century Ventures has more than 350 portfolio companies globally and managing partner Dave Garland says his firm understands how operational complexity can slow down “even the best investment teams”.
“GXE is solving that challenge with a platform that brings clarity and control to investment workflows. We’re backing GXE to make investment operations radically more efficient,” says Garland.
GXE opted to raise the Series A round from strategic investors, including angel investors and family offices, arguing that its investors bring “strategic value as end users who deeply understand the pain-point GXE is solving”. The company says these investors also can connect GXE to their own investment network.
Max Kausman, the founder of Advance VC, a fund-of-funds focused on fund secondaries, understands first-hand the benefits of the GXE platform.
“As a fund-of-funds with a portfolio spanning multiple investment funds, operational oversight can quickly become a challenge,” says Kausman.
“The GXE platform has made it easy to manage, report, and make decisions with confidence, freeing up time for strategic work."
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