Extend, the leading provider of modern product protection, today announced a $40 million Series B round led by Meritech Capital, with participation from PayPal Ventures as well as existing investors Great Point Ventures and Shah Capital Partners – bringing Extend’s funding to $56 million since its founding in February 2019. Extend also announced new partnerships with Peloton, iRobot, Harman / JBL, Advance Auto Parts,Traeger Grills, BlendJet, SoClean, 1More, August Home, Balsam Hill, NewAir, Evolve Skateboards, and others. Extend enables these merchants to offer customers an up-leveled extended warranty experience, while also increasing their margins and bottom-line profit. This new funding will be used to continue to develop Extend’s best in class extended warranty platform, build features that delight its customers, and further expand its software development and sales teams.
Extend re-invented the broken and antiquated customer experience associated with extended warranties and protection plans by providing an elegant end-to-end solution that educates consumers and guides them through the warranty purchase. A fully licensed administrator, Extend eliminated the traditionally cumbersome and frustrating process of filing a claim by allowing customers to file and have their claim approved in seconds through their friendly customer service chatbot Kaley.
Extend has quickly become a core part of the next generation commerce stack and an essential tool for merchants who have never been able to offer extended warranties before. Extend provides a simple way for merchants to integrate an extended warranty program into eCommerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Hybris, 3DCart, and supports custom solutions through their easy to use APIs. Extend enables protection plan sales online, in call centers, through email, with in-box offers, in-store, and more. Extended warranties provide merchants with an entirely new revenue stream and give customers greater peace of mind when making purchase decisions.
“Product protection plans can be a huge lifesaver for consumers and a powerful revenue generator for retailers,” said Woodrow Levin, CEO and Co-Founder of Extend. “Extend is serving both of these groups by dramatically reducing integration overhead for merchants, and making extended warranties something that consumers can trust and rely on. This new funding will help us to continue Extend’s rapid growth with a keen focus on elevating the merchant and consumer experience, which will in turn drive brand loyalty as we build the leading modern extended warranty platform.”
“Meritech always strives to work with companies that are seeking to define the future of an industry, and that’s exactly what Extend is doing with its platform,” said Alex Clayton, General Partner at Meritech Capital. “Extend is filling a huge gap in the eCommerce infrastructure market by streamlining the process for merchants to offer extended warranties and protection plans on their products, and providing a seamless customer experience for consumers from start to finish. We’re eager to see what’s next.”
“Merchants of all sizes can benefit from extended warranties but implementing and maintaining them has been too complex for many businesses,” said Jay Ganatra, Partner at PayPal Ventures. “Extend shares PayPal’s commitment to providing merchants with easy to use tools that help them better connect with and support their customers. On top of that, the Extend team has seriously improved the end-user experience through its use of their conversational chatbot. We’re excited to invest in Extend as it continues to redefine this space.”
With this new round of funding, Extend continues to bring on new partnerships with leading retailers across consumer electronics, sports and fitness equipment, auto parts, appliances, furniture, jewelry and watches, medical devices, glasses, and more. Extend’s proprietary machine learning framework is able to deliver 3-4 times the average attach rate of legacy protection plans, with many merchant partners seeing an attach rate of over 12%. No other extended warranty provider utilizes technology in the same manner to maximize revenue for the merchant, while also delivering an AppleCare-like experience for all customers.
“Extended warranties have long been a part of the electronics industry, but Extend is the first company that’s truly made the warranty process easy and appealing for our customers,” said Dave Spinato, Vice President of Global eCommerce at HARMAN International. “Extend’s seamless integration with our commerce channels has allowed Harman / JBL to stand up a best in class program that will drive incremental revenue with minimal effort. Consumers have even greater trust in our offerings now thanks to Extend’s protection plans and first-rate claim service.”
“In addition to our funding and new merchant partnerships, we have some very exciting plans for Extend as we look ahead. We are preparing to expand our team by more than 100 people to well over 200, by the end of 2021,” added Levin. “We are building out in-house underwriting capabilities, and working on additional features and infrastructure that will continue to significantly distance Extend from the rest of the market.”
ABOUT EXTEND
Extend is an API-first company that allows any merchant to easily offer extended warranties and protection plans while providing the merchant's end customers with a vastly improved and modern support experience that eliminates many of the issues customers face today with legacy providers. Extend works with leading retailers across consumer electronics, appliances, auto parts, sports and fitness, and more. The company’s modern and digitally-native solution delivers an up-leveled product protection experience that results in a win for merchants and their customers.