A brother-sister duo who created one of Central Florida’s most successful tech businesses in recent history has returned with a platform that could grow access to capital for small and medium-sized businesses.
Sal Rehmetullah and Suneera Madhani, who famously built Stax in Orlando to unicorn status, announced Worth AI.
They announced the new fintech platform on LinkedIn on Tuesday morning.
Worth AI is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to scan data in real time for more accurate risk assessments, quicker decisions and more standardized business credit scores when assessing underwriting and risk management.
The platform could benefit small and medium-sized businesses, in particular.
‘A desperate need’
“There is a desperate need for data transparency and accurate financial profiling of businesses,” said Madhani, co-founder and co-CEO of Worth AI, in a news release. “The credit score has been standardized from a consumer lens, but the business credit score has not – and every financial institution, lender, bank, and fintech is assessing SMBs uniquely, with outdated human decisions and risk engines causing biases in decision making and massive risk of loss.”
She continued to say that Worth will set a standard for business credit scores.
“I couldn’t be more excited for businesses to know their worth,” she said.
The patent-pending platform “fundamentally changes how enterprises underwrite the financial credit worth of small- and medium-sized businesses through one single score,” Rehmettulah explained.
The launch once again brings Rehmetullah and Madhani together to build a financial technology company in Central Florida. They successfully launched Stax Payments in 2014 as Fattmerchant .
The company found consistent success and grew to occupy three floors of a downtown Orlando building, employing hundreds.
Over time, they became one of the more-recognizable businesses in the community, frequently supporting small businesses at pitch competitions after essentially sweeping them during the early years of Stax.
Madhani and Rehmetullah left the company about a year ago. Madhani has since established CEO School, an effort to support female entrepreneurs.