Slope is a lending startup that uses artificial intelligence to vet businesses. Amazon Starting Tuesday, we will be offering reusable lines of credit to Amazon sellers. JP Morgan Chase the company exclusively told CNBC.
This new relationship will allow eligible U.S. Amazon vendors to apply for and access funds directly through their Amazon seller accounts with real-time approvals.
Slope co-founder and CEO Lawrence Lin Murata said he saw the ups and downs of running a small business when he was growing up in São Paulo.
Hayashi Murata helped his parents in the family’s toy store, which they had run for more than 30 years. As he gained more insight into business finances, he said he realized that cash flow was a major pain point for his parents and other small businesses.
That led him to launch Slope, an AI-powered lending platform, with co-founder Alice Deng, with support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and JPMorgan Chase.
“By leveraging AI, we are able to take on these businesses and handle all the complexity of risk assessment for the business,” said Lin Murata. “At the same time,[we’re]giving them a very easy real-time experience.”
Slope said the financing facility starts at 8.99% annual interest and requires vendors to be in business for at least one year and have annual revenue of more than $100,000. Once approved, Amazon sellers can draw the line as needed and choose a time period ranging from three months to one year to align repayments with inventory cycles. Scope did not disclose the financial aspects of its deal with Amazon.
“Most people don’t realize that sellers, independent sellers, are kind of the backbone of Amazon and e-commerce in general,” Deng Xiaoping told CNBC. “More than 60% of Amazon’s sales come from independent sellers.”
Deng Xiaoping said Slope is bridging the gap with new partnerships. Currently, Amazon sellers can use some third parties to access capital, but Deng said these efforts are focused on smaller sellers, whereas Slope is focused on mature sellers, some of whom reach hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and require bank-level financing.
Deng Xiaoping said that when Amazon made its own loan about four years ago, the total addressable market was between $1 billion and $2 billion. With Slope taking over the program, the company expects that number to grow even further.
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC: “We are excited about our work with Slope to expand the financing tools available to Amazon’s retail partners.” “Access to sufficient capital is a critical need for small business owners, whether they’re just starting out or looking to grow, and we’re always looking at new ways to help sellers succeed on Amazon Stores.”
Slope’s new agreement allows sellers to use proprietary Amazon performance data and Slope’s in-house large-scale language model to apply for capital directly in Amazon Seller Central in minutes and get approved almost instantly, Lin Murata said.
“That’s one of the reasons we can offer you more attractive offers than if you were outside of the Amazon dashboard,” said Lin Murata. “And we analyze Amazon’s performance, data, and cash flow in real time to make decisions in real time.”
Slope’s co-founders say this is an easier, faster and more integrated process than applying for a loan from a bank as a small business. They said the detailed data provided by Amazon, such as the breakdown of sales by product, allows AI models to make more informed financing decisions than banks can make based on overall financial statements.
With this new agreement, Amazon joins Slope’s already growing number of customers. samsung, alibabaIKEA etc.
Den Murata and Hayashi Murata said the company is trialling the new Amazon integration, and although the trial period has only been in place for a few weeks, they have seen significant demand and a 300% week-on-week increase in applications.
“Going back to our parents’ original inspiration, we want to be the credit intelligence layer for these companies,” says Lin Murata. “Ultimately, what we’re really doing is helping these companies grow by providing fair, affordable, fast and very easy access to different forms of financing.”
