A group of former Up Bank staff have raised $4 million in pre-seed funding for a new Melbourne startup betting that agentic AI will fundamentally change how consumers manage money.
Extraordinary Money, also known as XMO, was co-founded by former Up chief product officer Anson Parker and payments executive Sam Mendelsohn.
The round was co-led by Airtree Ventures and Triple Bubble, with participation from Arconic Capital and several angel investors.
The startup plans to launch in Australia within the next 12 months and is currently applying for both an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) and Australian Credit Licence (ACL).
The company describes itself as building “AI-native consumer finance”, arguing the next wave of fintech products will move beyond adding chatbot features to existing banking apps.
“We think of our customers as not just the individuals, but their agents too,” Parker told Startup Daily.
Get the best of Startup Daily straight to your inbox
Want to know the latest in startup news? Subscribe to our daily news and analysis coverage on what’s happening to ANZ startups, investors and the broader ecosystem. And best of all, it's FREE!
By continuing, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
“Agents create an amazing opportunity to carry huge cognitive load for consumers and be ‘always on’ to serve them and look after them.”
The founders argue existing neobanks still rely too heavily on backwards-looking spending data.
“One of the big ones is the ‘so what?’ problem,” Parker said.
“We’ve seen neobanks increasingly bring spending insights into the mainstream experience, but customers struggle to stay engaged with charts and graphs over the long term.”
Instead, XMO wants to build what it describes as a predictive financial model that helps consumers anticipate future financial decisions rather than simply reviewing past spending behaviour.
The company said the fresh funding would largely go toward hiring, AI infrastructure costs and regulatory approvals.
“We’re also in the process of applying for an AFSL and ACL which takes time and money (not to mention patience).”
XMO also expects AI agents to eventually take a more active role in managing consumer finances.
“We absolutely expect AI to be making purchases and saving people money in bills in the future,” Parker said.
“Of course there needs to be safeguards and there’s plenty of learning ahead to ensure there are the appropriate consumer protections in place.”
The comments come as the finance sector increasingly experiments with generative AI and autonomous AI agents, while regulators globally grapple with questions around liability, consumer protections and financial advice laws.
Parker said the company is currently focused on helping users manage everyday finances rather than entering the regulated financial advice category.
“We’re focussed on using AI to help customers better understand and control their everyday spending and finances and are not going down the financial advice path for now,” he said.
The raise also marks another high-profile fintech return for several former Up Bank staff, with investors heavily backing the founding team’s track record.
“As an early pre-seed stage start-up investors are largely backing the team and that early vision,” Parker said.
“We have many of the key Up employees responsible for building one of the most-loved financial offerings in Australia.”
Airtree general partner, James Cameron, said the firm had been watching for startups building consumer finance products specifically designed around generative AI rather than retrofitting existing banking products.
“We’ve been watching the GenAI inflection point arrive in consumer finance for a couple of years, waiting for the right team to build natively for it rather than retrofit,” Cameron said.