Kita, an AI-native credit assessment platform built to modernize lending globally, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding round led by BoxGroup.
The round included participation from Y Combinator, Golden Gate Ventures, US News Digital Ventures, BEENEXT, Kaya Founders, Genting Ventures, and Apex Star Capital, the family office of Xiaomi co-founder Lin Bin.
The financing also received backing from angel investors including Shivani Siroya, Kaz Nejatian, Linda Du, Kulveer Taggar, Jason Miller, and Philippine business leader Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, along with founders and operators from companies including Apple and Mercor.
Led by co-founders Carmel Limcaoco and Rhea Malhotra, Kita plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering team, strengthen its underwriting and fraud-detection capabilities, and meet growing demand across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the United States.
Automating a Manual Credit Process
Credit underwriting remains a highly manual process for many lenders, with critical information often buried in bank statements, financial records, payslips, invoices, and other documents. Reviewing these materials can take days or even months, particularly when evaluating thin-file borrowers.
Kita aims to address this challenge through an AI-native platform that automates key processes across loan origination, underwriting, and credit decisioning.
The company says it has already processed more than $130 million in loan volume across the U.S., Southeast Asia, and Latin America, reducing underwriting tasks that previously took days or months to less than 60 seconds.
AI Agents for Credit Assessment
Kita’s platform includes an AI Credit Officer that communicates with borrowers through SMS, WhatsApp and email to collect information and support the application process.
Its Kita Capture technology processes more than 50 types of financial, legal, and identity documents, extracting relevant credit information while identifying inconsistencies and potential fraud.
The platform’s AI Underwriter then applies each lender’s credit policies, analyzes borrower information, and produces decision-ready credit memos. Kita also provides source-level traceability, allowing lenders to verify the figures and information used in the AI-generated analysis.
Keeping Humans at the Center of Lending
Kita is designed to augment credit teams rather than replace them. By automating repetitive information gathering and analytical tasks, the platform enables lending professionals to focus on judgment and final credit decisions.
The company emphasizes human oversight and transparency as core elements of its approach particularly as lenders adopt ai for increasingly complex underwriting workflows.
Expanding Credit Access Globally
Kita was founded out of Stanford Computer Science and shaped by work with lenders in Manila. The company identified a common challenge across markets, document-heavy underwriting processes can prevent lenders from efficiently serving creditworthy borrowers.
The platform is currently live with lenders across the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United States, supporting consumer, microfinance, and SME lending.
The company plans to use its new funding to expand its technology and reach additional markets, with a focus on making credit assessment faster, more transparent, and more accessible for borrowers who may be overlooked by traditional lending systems.
