This Dutch app believes bots trade better than humans; raises €13M to allows anyone to trade in cryptocurrency from €50

Haarlem-based investment app BOTS is a company that makes automated investing accessible to everyone. The app offers access to these investment bots, which makes high-quality automatic trading algorithms available to everyone.

In a recent development, the investment app announced that it has raised €13M in its Series A round of funding. Since the company’s inception in 2018, it has raised a total of €25M in funding from investors.

Investors in this round

The current round was invested by Amsterdam-based venture capital firm Airbridge Equity Partners (AEP) and a group of informal investors.

Rick van Boekel, co-founder and partner of AEP, believes there are opportunities to broaden trading with bots and to make it accessible to an even larger audience. He says, “Bots.io has shown the potential with algorithm trading over the past year. It is currently limited to cryptocurrency, but we hope to be able to expand BOTS to include stock and currency trading soon.”

AEP was founded in 2017 and focuses on the growth funding of technology-driven scale-ups in Europe. It invests in both B2B and B2C and has investments in the Netherlands (including Knowingo+, ChannelEngine, and DAN.com, among others), UK, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

“Bots trade better than humans”

Founded in 2018 by Michiel Stokman, Colin Groos, and Stefan Bijen, BOTS makes automated investing accessible to everyone. The BOTS app provides access to investment bots, which makes high-quality automatic trading algorithms available to everyone.

Using the tabs in the BOTS app, users can easily find out what they have invested, discover the latest bots, and manage their finances.

Michiel Stokman explains, “We have shown the potential of algorithm-based trading over the past year. People can choose one or more bots with a strategy and risk profile that suits them. In this way, they don’t have to worry about the right buying or selling moment, but can see how the algorithm, the bot makes the decisions.”

According to Stokman, this technology is used by professional traders, however, it is now also available to private investors. People can invest as little as €50 in a particular bot and can stop a bot at any time.

Launched in May 2020, BOTS has over 200,000 users in 18 countries. It uses automated trading strategies to invest in cryptocurrency (from €50) quickly and without any previous investing experience.

The company has more than 70 employees in 5 countries.

Algorithms

BOTS provides an opportunity to invest in various bots – a programme that buys and sells based on trading algorithms with a specific strategy. Currently, there are now more than 250 bots on the platform. Though these bots – which use their own strategies – only trade in cryptocurrencies, the company expects to offer other types of assets before the end of this year.

Michiel Stokman says, “We expect our users to be able to choose from bots that trade in regular stocks before the end of this year. In addition, we will put even more focus on the user-friendliness and technological development of our app, which will be live in more than 60 countries early next year.”