Cake Financial Acquired By E*Trade

Social finance company Cake Financial has just been acquired by E*Trade. The company launched in 2007 at the first TechCrunch50 conference (when it was still TechCrunch40). Cake Financial has just posted a note to its homepage announcing the deal and to inform users that the site will no longer exist as an independent service. Instead, its features will be incorporated into E*Trade’s website.

We’re hearing that there was a bidding war for Cake, and that The Motley Fool was also in the running. CEO Steven Carpenter declined to comment on the details of the deal.

We’ve included the full text of the notice below:

To All Members and Users of Cake Financial-

I am excited to announce that as of today, Cake Financial is now a proud part of E*Trade Financial Corporation and aspects of the Cake service will be incorporated into the E*Trade website. As of January 14, 2010, the Cake Financial website will cease operation as an independent service. We are honored to be a part of the E*trade family and believe that E*trade can make the vision we had for all investors a reality.

I want to assure you that in the course of this transition, the financial information in your Cake account and the private data you’ve shared on Cake is safe. Your information is encrypted and will be deleted and destroyed. For those of you that paid for either Cake Premium or Cake Comparison, you will be reimbursed fully.

Since launching Cake in September 2007 as one of the first class of TechCrunch40 companies, the team has worked tirelessly to give investors the proper clarity into their portfolios to ensure they were achieving the best returns possible. This past summer, we launched an industry-leading recommendation service so that average investors like you and me could get the same kind of insights those with multi-million dollar portfolios receive.

On behalf of everyone that worked on Cake, thank you for your loyalty and patronage over the past two years. I wish you peace and prosperity in the coming year and beyond.

Cake launched with the ability to let users share their current investment portfolios with their peers, and built out quite a few other features in the following two years, like the Cakedex social stock index. Last August, it launched a new premium service designed to serve as an automated investment advisor.

It’s worth pointing out that the acquisition appears to center on Cake’s team and technology rather than its user base — rather than absorbing Cake’s users into E*Trade, the notice above states that user data will be deleted and destroyed, with premium users getting reimbursements.