Last year we saw continued interest in a broad array of fintech companies. Recently the fintech space has become more mature, bringing in ever larger rounds to the more established fintech companies. At the beginning of 2019 we began to track the fintech deals over $10 million and we are doing the same for 2020. In 2019 we recorded 199 funding rounds representing over $14 billion invested. Here are the ten largest funding rounds from our list. The total investment from these rounds alone was over $4 billion.
1. Greensill
SoftBank is no stranger to committing large amounts of capital and their $800 million investment in Greensill was just another example of that. Greensill has more than doubled their growth rate annually since 2015 and at the time the round was announced was valued at $3.5 billion. The company operates in the supply chain finance space. They plan to accelerate their growth in Brazil and enter other markets including China and India. Read more
2. Chime
Chime’s brought in a $500 million funding round making a big splash at the end of the year. They are one of the leaders in the digital banking space and are valued at $5.8 billion. The round was led by DST Global and they intend to use the funds to hire employees and expand into more products. CEO Chris Britt also discussed the possibility of making fintech acquisitions. Read more
3. SoFi
SoFi is one of the more well known fintechs in the US. This has been a result both of their marketing spend, having secured the naming rights to a new stadium in Los Angeles and their success in branching out into multiple product offerings. The $500 million round was led by Qatar Investment Authority, valuing the company at approximately the same valuation as their previous round of $4.3 billion. Read more
4. Klarna
Klarna operates in the buy now, pay later space and was founded all of the way back in 2005. They raised $460 million in August 2019, making them Europe’s most valuable fintech startup at $5.5 billion. Klarna is planning to use the funds in part to expand to the US, similar to plans of many of the other leading fintechs in Europe. They are also one to keep an eye on for a potential future IPO. Read more
5. OakNorth
Just behind Klarna comes another large investment in a European fintech with OakNorth’s $440 million fundraising round in early 2019. OakNorth is different than most making this list in that they are a bank focusing on serving small and medium sized growth businesses. They operate a lending business and have also licensed their technology to banks in at least nine different countries. Read more
6. Nubank
Nubank is the only fintech from South America making the list. The Brazil-based company raised a $400 million Series F round in July and reportedly fetched a valuation over $10 billion. Nubank which offers a variety of financial products to consumers had over 12 million customers as of July 2019 which makes it the sixth largest financial institution by customer count in Brazil. They also recently expanded to Mexico and Argentina. Read more
7. Robinhood
Robinhood is best known for their free stock trading app and they raised $323 million in 2019. What’s interesting is that many of their competitors have cut commissions on trading but it’s clear that Robinhood wants to expand beyond free trading into other financial products. They recently announced a revamped savings product after a failed launch in late 2018. The company had 6 million customers at the end of 2018, a number which has surely grown since making them well positioned as they move into new areas. Read more
8. Affirm
Affirm is well known in the US with their point of sale finance solution. The $300 million Series F round included Thrive, Fidelity, Wellington Management, Ballie Gifford, Sound Ventures as well as existing backers Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures. Read more
9. N26
N26 is most well known in Europe but officially launched in the US in 2019. The $300 million round valued the company at $2.7 billion. At the time of the announcement on January 9, 2019 the challenger had 2.3 million customers in 24 European markets. Read more
10. TransferWise
TransferWise raised $292 billion in May and planned to use the funds to hire 750 more team members. More recently the company reported that they handle $5.25 billion in transactions every month and have over 6 million users. 24% of their payments now happen in under 20 seconds. Read more
Conclusion
With such a large amount of interest in fintech in 2019 it is hard to imagine how 2020 will shape up. There have been some industry experts that have taken pause with the valuations some of these companies have been fetching, but it seems like that had little impact on the deals we saw close throughout 2019. We’ll be keeping a close eye in 2020 and look forward to hearing updates from many of these companies at our upcoming LendIt Fintech USA event in May.
