A relatively new financial technology company will expand in Utah, bringing up to 1,000 jobs over the next seven years.
Brex, a company that provides corporate credit cards for young companies, made the announcement last week after being approved for a tax credit incentive by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board.
The company currently is in a temporary office location in Salt Lake City and has yet to decide whether the permanent site will be in Salt Lake County or Utah County.
Founded in 2017 and based in San Francisco, the company originally focused on technology companies but has advanced to e-commerce and life sciences companies. It has raised over $382 million from venture capital investors.
“We’re super-excited about this project. It’s one of the largest projects we’ve had in a while,” Thomas Wadsworth, GOED associate managing director, told the board. “It’s extremely difficult for early-stage entrepreneurs to get credit, and this company is aiming to help bridge that gap by looking at a number of different metrics — different than traditional corporate credit cards — to be able to provide capital for these companies to grow.”
The company considered several sites. GOED documents indicate that the options included New York City and Vancouver, Canada.
“We’re super-excited about being here today in Utah,” Michael Tannenbaum, Brex chief financial officer, told the board. “We’ve been thinking for a long time about how we can expand our talent base.”
The company considered the overall talent pool and the availability of fintech talent, plus the base of strong sales, customer support, engineering and financial services talent, he said. Utah also fared well because of the strong support for the project by GOED and the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, he added.
“I think for us, as we started to weigh the options, we really wanted to pick this location,” Tannenbaum said. “It really has … a deep talent pool. It’s something that we’re super-excited about as we start to scale our company and grow outside of San Francisco, where we’ve been headquartered since we got started.”
The incentive is for up to about $2.7 million. The $23.4 million project is expected to generate new wages of $281.4 million over seven years and new state tax revenue of nearly $11 million during that time. The new jobs are expected to pay an average of $80,000.
Wadsworth said the job mix will include not just customer service, sales and marketing positions but also some headquarters functions such as finance, accounting, human resources and engineering.
“We’re extremely excited about the opportunity this has to bolster our fintech sector,” Wadsworth said, adding that Utah has found a niche with companies in two industry clusters, such as financial services and IT/software.