Rocket Companies to buy personal finance app Truebill for $1.3B

Dan Gilbert’s Rocket Companies plans to buy a personal finance startup called Truebill for $1.275 billion.

The all-cash deal was announced Monday and is expected to close before the end of the year. A smartphone app with a fast-growing user base, Truebill was founded in 2015 by three brothers and is headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The number of Truebill employees, and whether any intend to move to metro Detroit after the sale, was not disclosed.

The Truebill deal will mark the biggest acquisition for Detroit-based Rocket Companies since it went public in summer 2020.

There are more than a dozen different companies under the Rocket umbrella, the biggest being Rocket Mortgage, formerly known as Quicken Loans, which reportedly accounted for more than 95% of Rocket Companies’ total revenues in 2020.

The Truebill app tracks its users’ budget and spending and helps them with canceling recurring subscription charges. Truebill says it has doubled its number of users in the past year and is now up to 2.5 million users and $50 billion in analyzed transactions each month.

Rocket said that acquiring Truebill will add $100 million a year in recurring revenue to its own bottom line and bring Rocket “closer to the goal of creating a centralized destination for consumers to manage their entire financial lives.”

On Monday, Rocket shares closed down 6% to $14.47.

Truebill’s three founders are brothers Haroon Mokhtarzada, Idris Mokhtarzada and Yahya Mokhtarzada.

Haroon Mokhtarzada also founded Minder, a dating app for Muslims that is now known as Salams, and previously sold his Webs.com website creation business for $117.5 million in 2011.

Contact JC Reindl at 313-222-6631 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @jcreindl. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.