Tellus (app)

[4][5] The company's primary product, an eponymous app, provides a property management and payment system for use in housing rentals,[6] and offers non-FDIC-insured cash accounts targeted at general consumers.

Prior to the firm's creation, Lee had business connections in both China and the United States, while Zhu had mostly worked in Silicon Valley.

The lending arm, per a patent application and Barron's, initially used money from accredited investors to fund cash out refinances.[7][13]: 16, paras.

0181–0185 In 2020, the firm pivoted and released "Tellus Boost", a product where funding for mortgage lending was drawn from customer deposits held in a cash account, in exchange for which depositors would receive interest payments.

[15] By April 2023, the company had expanded its offerings made using funds from consumer depository accounts to include real estate bridge loans.

[15] The majority of the firm's lending takes place in the San Francisco Bay area; between April and December 2023, 68% of funds lent went to affiliates of AlphaX RE Capital for their investments in Silicon Valley properties.

[16]: 255–256, 264 Todd Phillips and Matthew Adam Bruckner, writing in the Stanford Law & Policy Review, refer to Tellus as an "imitation bank",[16]: 231 characterizing it as being among "retail-facing institutions that take customer deposits while evading the banking and consumer protection laws that protect customers and the financial system".

[14]: 5 Ann M. Lipton, a business law professor at Tulane University, told Barron's in April 2023 that Tellus's consumer debt products appeared to be "like the kinds of things that have been deemed securities in the past".

[5] By July 2023, the FDIC had instructed Tellus to update its social media posts and other materials intended for consumers to provide clearer information about the nature and extent of deposit insurance coverage for the firm's products.