A total of $1bn was raised across the 39 FinTech deals this week, as the US leads the charge with more than half of all FinTech funding rounds.
FinTech funding has continued to rise over the past couple of weeks. Last week saw $890m raised through 25 deals, and the previous week saw just $616m raised through 17 deals.
The top ten deals of the week raised a collective $815m, of which, one deal pulled in a total of $333m. This was Porch Group, a US-based vertical software company that claims to be reinventing the home services and insurance industries. The company, which is based in Seattle, provides a moving concierge service to homebuyers, helping them save time and make better decisions on critical services.
Much like last week, the US dominated the FinTech funding rounds. Six of the biggest ten deals were by companies from the country (Porch Group, Unchained, Semgrep, Halcyon, Safe Security and Clerkie). Other countries to be represented in the top ten were the UK (Yonder), Israel (Coro), the Netherlands (Factris) and Canada (Certn).
The US was responsible for the majority of the FinTech deals this week, accounting for 20 of the 39 rounds. The UK was the next biggest market, recording seven deals. Israel, the Netherlands, Canada and Singapore each recorded two deals, and Luxembourg, Japan, Germany and Australia each had one deal.
In terms of sectors, CyberTech companies proved to be the most popular this week, recording nine deals. Four of these were among the ten biggest deals (Coro, Semgrep, Halcyon and Safe Security). Of the nine deals, six at US-based companies.
Research from FinTech Global this week found that total cybersecurity deal activity (excluding the US) declined by 6% in 2022, however, investment increased by 15%. There were 291 CyberTech funding rounds completed outside of the US in 2022, and a total of $3.9bn was raised.
Another report from FinTech global found that CyberTech deal activity dropped by 44% year-over-year in March 2023. There were 53 deals over the month, and a total of $293m was raised, which represents an 81% decline in March 2022. In a similar picture to that shown in this week’s funding rounds, the US was home to the majority of deals, accounting for 50% of them.
The next most prominent sectors this week were PayTech and RegTech, with each recording six deals. This was followed by marketplace lending (five), InsurTech (four), WealthTech (three), ESG FinTech and infrastructure and enterprise software (two), and cryptocurrency and PropTech (one).
The high number of RegTech deals this week continues a strong opening quarter for the sector. A total of 47 European RegTech deals were completed in Q1 2023, representing a 56% increase on Q1 2022. While the total number of deals experienced a notable rise, total funding volume declined by 2%.
In Europe, the UK was home to the lion share of deals, accounting for 18 transactions, which is a 38% share of the total deals.
Here are this week’s 39 FinTech funding rounds.
Porch Group secures $333m convertible notes financing
Porch Group, a vertical software company reinventing the home services and insurance industries, has secured $333m in convertible notes financing.
Seattle-based Porch Group provides software and services to approximately 30,900 home services companies, such as home inspectors, moving companies, loan officers, title companies, real estate agencies, utility companies, and warranty companies.
Through these relationships and its multiple brands, Porch Group provides a moving concierge service to homebuyers, helping them save time and make better decisions on critical services, including insurance, warranty, moving, security, TV/internet, home repair and improvement, and more.
The New Notes offering and Existing Notes repurchase are expected to close concurrently on April 20, 2023, subject to customary closing conditions.
The New Notes will be convertible into cash, shares of common stock of the company, or a combination of cash and shares of common stock at Porch’s election at an initial conversion rate of 39.9956 shares of common stock per $1,000 principal amount of the New Notes, which is equivalent to an initial conversion price of approximately $25.00 per share.
Porch intends to use the net proceeds from the New Notes offering to repurchase $200 million of the Existing Notes and to fund the repayment of a $10 million senior secured term loan of a Porch Group subsidiary, in each case plus accrued and unpaid interest thereon and related fees and expenses, and use the remainder of the net proceeds for general corporate purposes.
Credit card provider Yonder scores £62.5m ($77m) in debt and equity
Credit card provider Yonder has reportedly raised £62.5m in its Series A funding round, which comprises £12.5m in equity and £30m in debt financing.
The Series A capital injection was led by Northzone and RTP Global, according to a report from UKTN. Other commitments came from Crust Bros founder Joseph Moore and Cred founder Kunal Shah.
Yonder claims its post-money valuation exceeds £70m.
The Series A round is still open and Yonder is looking to launch a private crowdfund later in the month.
Based in the UK, Yonder is looking to launch across more cities, enter new verticals and increase the size of its team to 35.
Yonder co-founder and CEO Tim Chong said, “Yonder is a social-first business, so being able to expand to other UK cities and to grow our rewards proposition into other verticals like sport, fitness and theatre as a result of this funding is a huge step and will mean we can offer our adventurous members more ways to experience more of their city.”
The idea for Yonder came from the credit difficulties co-founders Chong, Theso Jivajirajah and Harry Jell faced when moving to London from Australia.
Yonder came out of stealth last year with a £20m seed round, which had the backing of ex-footballer Rio Ferdinand and GoCardless founder Matt Robinson.
The FinTech company claims to be the ‘epic’ credit card for foodies. Users of the card will earn one point for every pound they spend, with up to five-times this at Yonder partners. The users can then use these points at various restaurants.
Mid-market cybersecurity platform Coro pulls in $75m
Coro, a cybersecurity platform, has pulled in $75m from its latest funding raise to bring its total funding over the last year to $155m.
From the recent funding round, Coro added Energy Impact Partners to its current investors alongside Balderton Capital and JVP.
The company claims its modern approach to cybersecurity – delivering enterprise grade security through a single platform that unifies, simplifies and automates workloads — has been validated by more than 5000 mid-market customers across every vertical industry.
Over the past year, Coro tripled its revenue, customer and employee base, and signed more than 100 new channel partners. The Company also expanded its footprint in Chicago, where a new business enablement centre is under development to support the company’s direct sales team and rapidly growing network of resellers. Coro projects it will again grow 300% year-over-year in 2023, extending its extraordinary record to a 5th year in a row.
Coro stepped up to protect the hundreds of thousands of companies neglected by the cyber security industry by removing the three barriers inherent to the status quo: price, complexity, and the need for a dedicated cyber security team.
The firm claims it is the first SaaS solution to include all the security needed for a mid-sized business to protect its users, devices, email, data, and cloud applications.
Coro will use the new funding to support its rapidly growing customer base and drive growth across its R&D, channel, sales and service teams. The new capital, the firm claims, will also enable it to continue to expand the capabilities of its cybersecurity platform, both organically and through strategic acquisitions.
Bitcoin firm Unchained locks in $60m from Series B
Unchained, a financial services firm offering collaborative custody multisignature vaults and loans for bitcoin holders, has secured $60m in a Series B led by Valor Equity Partners.
Founded in 2017, Texas-based Unchained helps users securely take control of their bitcoin with its cold storage vaults. Users can get access to the firm’s suite of integrated financial services, including a trading desk, bitcoin-backed loans, and bitcoin retirement accounts.
According to Unchained, Valor has a long track record helping innovative companies reach the broader market, both inside and outside of bitcoin. They are most famous for their early investments in SpaceX & Tesla but they have demonstrated their commitment to the bitcoin ecosystem through their growth investments in BitGo, Lightning Labs, Crusoe Energy and now in Unchained.
Dutch FinTech Factris scores €50m ($54m) investment
Dutch firm Factris has scored €50m in global funding from global investment business Aegon Asset Management.
Founded in 2017, Factris claims its mission is to empower SMEs through financial technology with personalised guidance.
The company recently reached the milestone of financing €1bn in invoices in the first quarter of 2023.
With this additional line of funding, Factris is on course to expand their SME financing services into Estonia in Q2 of 2023, as well as provide more business funding opportunities in existing EU markets which include the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
This new funding line, the firm claims, complements other partnerships whose funding helped Factris finish 2022 with strong organic growth that included a 58% increase of cumulative financing volume year over year for their pan-European market and an 83% financing-volume increase in the Netherlands alone.
Code security firm Semgrep snaps up $53m
Semgrep, a code security solution designed for engineering-centric security programs, has raised $53m in a Series C funding round.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and saw participation from Felicitis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Sequioa Capital. This round brings the total capital raised to $93m.
Semgrep is designed for engineers – software and security alike – who need to maintain a fast cadence of software development and solve the root causes of security issues. The firm uniquely enables developers at all levels and security teams to customise their code scanning, which results in ROI significantly beyond that of traditional code scanning tools.
The company said it solves these challenges with its engineer-centric approach: surfacing security findings during software development that are relevant to a given engineer. Once findings are presented, engineers can easily remediate, edit noisy rules, and provide feedback to the security team to strengthen security policies, thus making the security process collaborative.
Semgrep will use the new capital to invest in its product roadmap, expand its sales and growth marketing efforts as well as expanding internationally.
Alongside the funding, the company recently changed its name from r2c to Semgrep. The firm said that this rebrand is recognition of Semgrep as the technology layer that is underpinning the company mission now and going forward.
Cyber resilience platform Halcyon lands $50m Series A
Halcyon, a cyber resilience platform, has scored $50m in a Series A funding round headed by investor SYN Ventures.
Also taking part in the round was Dell Technologies Capital, Corner Ventures and a range of other strategic investors.
Halcyon claims it is the first solution designed specifically to defeat ransomware, with tools for preventing initial intrusion, disrupting attacks in progress, and immediately reversing the effects of ransomware in the event of a successful attack.
The company claims it takes a ‘multi-tiered approach’ to defeating ransomware. It claims this consists of pre-execution ransomware prevention, exploitation of ransomware features, advanced ransomware behaviour detections and endpoint and network resiliency.
Halcyon remarked that it will use the funding to accelerate the development and adoption of the Halcyon cyber resilience platform, the first of its kind designed from day-one to defeat ransomware and extortion campaigns.
Safe Security collects $50m in its Series B
AI-based cyber risk management SaaS platform Safe Security has collected $50m in its Series B funding round, which was led by Sorenson Capital.
Eight Roads, Telstra Ventures, WTI, the venture capital division of Fidelity Investments and all of Safe Security’s existing investors also joined the round. With the close of the round, the CyberTech has raised a total of $100m.
Safe Security claims to be the industry’s first AI driven, real-time solution for managing and mitigating cyber risk. Through a data driven approach, Safe supplies organisations an aggregated view of enterprise cyber risk and cybersecurity teams gain visibility across their entire attack surface, technology, people and third-parties.
Through this visibility, organisations can become more predictive with their cybersecurity.
Financial automation platform Clerkie secures $33m Series A
Clerkie, an AI-powered financial automation platform, has scored $33m in a Series A round headed by Left Lane Capital.
Other participants in the round include Wellington Management Company, Flourish Ventures, Citi Ventures, CMFG Ventures and Vestigo Ventures.
Clerkie CEO and co-founder Guy Assad said, “The consumer debt market is fundamentally broken for consumers and the creditors that serve them, as evidenced by the predatory collections practices and the crushing amount of debt burdening American families.
“Today, tens of millions of Americans are struggling with their debts and are falling into delinquency. It’s a lose-lose situation for the borrowers and for the banks who are racking up billions in losses. Our goal is to support struggling American families by giving them better tools to responsibly fulfil their debt obligations and ease their debt burden.”
According to Clerkie, the problem the firm is solving is one deeply personal for Assad. The CEO has seen firsthand, both in his family and in his community, the severe anxiety and financial hardship that can result from untenable debt burdens. After his own father was diagnosed and ultimately lost his battle with cancer, the medical bills and the credit card debts racked up.
Background screening enterprise Certn nets $30m
Certn, an online background checks and identity verification firm, has recently raised $30m in a Series B financing round.
Of the $30m, $29.5m of this came from Export Development Canada. To date, Certn has raised a total of $114m in venture funding.
This additional funding helps Certn, who acquired UK-based Credence Background Screening a year ago, to expand its background screening technology in EMEA markets.
Also taking part in the Series B raise B Capital, a strategic partner of Boston Consulting Group, Bank of Montreal, Gaingels, Covalent Ventures, Tribe, Inovia Capital, Telstra Ventures, Scribble, and Moxxie Ventures.
Certn said that this round follows a period of record revenue growth to the tune of 14533% from 2018 to 2022 — making Certn the second-fastest growing Canadian company according to Deloitte Canada’s Technology Fast 50 program.
Security firm Avalor comes out of stealth with $30m
Avalor has arisen from a period of stealth with $30m in total funding across a seed and a Series A funding round.
The $25m Series A investment was led by TCV and saw participation from Salesforce Ventures. This investment adds to a $5M Seed round led by Cyberstarts in with participation from Jibe Ventures.
Avalor’s Data Fabric for Security integrates disparate data sources from legacy systems, data lakes, data warehouses, SQL databases, applications or any source of data, providing a holistic view of business performance.
Through the company’s platform, security teams are able to prioritise risks, align with business goals, analyse complete, accurate and precise data and empower stakeholders.
Avalor is launching the first application powered by its security data fabric – a dedicated solution for vulnerability risk management and prioritisation.
Avalor will use the newly raised capital to expand its operations in the US and Israel. The firm is currently hiring for R&D, product and solution, sales, marketing and customer success.
Cybersecurity platform SpecterOps collects $25m
Cybersecurity platform SpecterOps has secured $25m for its Series A funding round, which was led by Decibel.
The capital will enable the CyberTech to accelerate the adoption of its BloodHound Enterprise (BHE) solution. BHE is allegedly the industry’s first platform for comprehensively removing identity attack paths in Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) and Azure AD.
Funds will also be used to expand the company’s research and development initiatives.
Other investors to join the Series A funding round include Mandiant CEO and founder Kevin Mandia and Duo Security co-founders Jon Oberheide and Dug Song.
BloodHound Enterprise was launched in 2021 and was inspired by SpecterOps’s BloodHound free and open source software (FOSS), which has become a popular tool for penetration testers and red teamers to identify attack paths within on-premises AD and Azure AD cloud environments.
The platform experienced significant growth in 2022, with its revenue and customer acquisition both growing by over 600%.
Neobank creator Fintech Farm raises $22m
Fintech Farm, which is helping to create neobanks in emerging markets, has reportedly closed its Series B funding round on $22m.
Growth investor Nordstar Fund led the round, which included equity and a convertible loan, according to a report from AIN.Capital. Another investor in the round was Chrome Capital.
Fintech Farm, which is based in the UK, was founded in 2020 by Dmytro Dubilet, Oleksandr Vityaz and Mykola Bezkrovny.
The company helps to create neobanks in emerging markets. These services provide customers with user-friendly mobile apps and credit products for mass audiences and those with little credit history.
It has launched three neobanks, so far. These are Leobank in Azerbaijan, Liobank in Vietnam and Fibo in Nigeria.
These neobanks offer customers a free credit card, which has 0% interest for the first 45 days.
Another of its features is to transfer money by simply shaking the mobile phone. The feature allows a user to send money to someone whilst on the Fibo app and shaking both of the phones, there is no need for account details or phone numbers.
Carbon accounting firm nZero lands $16m in Series A
nZero, a near real-time carbon management and accounting platform, has scored $16m in a Series A funding round.
According to the firm, the new funding round will enable the company to scale amid a global call for better, more accurate tracking and reporting of energy, financial, and greenhouse gas emissions data across the public and private sectors.
The Series A was led by both Fifth Wall—the largest asset manager focused on improving, future-proofing, and decarbonizing the built world—and a national US energy company. Also taking part in the raise were Piedmont Capital Investments and limited partner Henry Kravis, founder and co-chairman of KKR.
nZero claims it is the only 24/7 carbon management solution with the ability to sync automatically, analyse, and manage carbon emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 on a granular level, ultimately pairing financial and emissions data and insights that empower true business change.
Offering continuous 24/7 tracking, nZero captures hour-by-hour emissions changes in an easy-to-use platform to help clients track, manage, and report out their sustainability goals.
Since launching its services in April 2021, nZero has worked with various corporate, agriculture and government entities globally to help them understand their actual carbon impact and develop the most financially efficient and sustainable emissions reductions plans.
Digital insurance marketplace Capitola bags $15.6m
Capitola, a digital marketplace for commercial insurance that connects brokers and carriers, has raised $15.6m in Series A funding.
The round, which was led by Munich Re Ventures, follows on from Capitola’s $5m seed round closed in 2021 that was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Founded in 2021 by Naor Rosenberg (CTO), Amit Ben Nathan (CPO) and Sivan Iram (CEO), Capitola is a digital marketplace for commercial insurance that connects brokers and carriers and uses AI-based risk appetite matching to streamline the placement process.
The Capitola productivity and market intelligence platform aims to transform how broker teams work, saving time and eliminating errors with simplified and streamlined placements.
The Capitola platform organises and manages complex, hard to place and multi-layered programs with intuitive tools, creates customised client reports and proposals using automation features, and finds the right markets with up-to-date, AI-driven market intelligence.
According to Capitola, its platform allows broker teams to do more of what they do best: strengthen relationships, expand their client base, and close more deals, all of which helps fuel growth and profitability.
According to Capitola, this round will be used to grow Capitola’s platform with an emphasis on its market intelligence capabilities and to accelerate sales in the US.
Data security platform Dasera nabs $12m in Series A round
Data security platform Dasera has secured $12m in its Series A funding round, which was led by Storm Ventures.
Other commitments came from Correlation Ventures, Mighty Capital, Tau Ventures, Intuitive Cloud. Existing Dasera backers Sierra Ventures and Saama Capital.
This fresh equity will help Dasera bolster its product development, expand its market presence and deepen its customer support.
Dasera is a data security platform that focuses on automated data security and governance solutions for finance, healthcare and technology enterprises.
It claims its platform fosters a culture of trust, collaboration and innovation and creates data-driven environments.
Through Dasera companies can harness their data securely, providing automated data security and governance controls for on-prem and cloud environments. Its platform offers contextualised visibility and understanding of four data variables: data infrastructure, data and its attributes, data users, and data usage.
Composable checkout platform Rally lands $12m
Rally, a composable checkout platform for ecommerce merchants, has secured $12m in a Series A investment round.
The round was led by March Capital and saw participation from Felix Capital, Commerce Ventures, Afore Capital, Alumni Ventures and Kraken Ventures.
Rally’s solution gives merchants the freedom to design and implement a bespoke checkout that works best for their teams. The platform offers ecommerce businesses a one-click checkout solution as well as tools for post-purchase offers, that have proven to reduce the industry average 70% cart abandonment rate and increase revenue by over 12%.
The funding will help Rally further strengthen its team, penetrate enterprise and international markets, and expand integrations beyond Swell and BigCommerce with other commerce platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud and commercetools and payment methods such as Affirm and AfterPay.
Rally was launched in 2020 after the company’s co-founders saw demand from merchants for a next-generation checkout platform outside of the Shopify ecosystem. Their launch came at a time during the ecommerce boom when merchants demanded a more customizable solution as well as greater control over the checkout process to scale and provide consumers with a better shopping experience.
Rally’s existing infrastructure can be integrated with any offering and is leading the way in how merchants future-proof their stores. They currently offer support for multiple back-end and front-end platforms, payment processors, and payment methods. Later this year, Rally will strengthen its fraud protection offering and plans to build out Web3 features, starting with allowing merchants to accept cryptocurrencies in their checkout.
Next Gate Tech lands €8m ($8.7m) in Deutsche Börse-backed raise
Next Gate Tech, a provider of technologies for the financial services industry, has raised €8m in an investment round led by DB1 Ventures.
DB1 Ventures is the corporate venture capital unit of Deutsche Börse Group. There was also continued support of existing investors, such as NewAlpha Asset Management, Volta Ventures, Expon Capital, and Seed X.
Next Gate Tech leverages the latest cloud technology, to give its clients, all their data from multiple unharmonized/unstructured sources, as one consistent, consolidated, and independent source enabling them to streamline their day-to-day processes.
Kneip is the data franchise of Deutsche Börse Group´s Fund Service. The partnership between Kneip and Next Gate Tech enables financial institutions to streamline their fund distribution and regulatory reporting processes.
According to Next Gate, this recent funding raise will speed up the development of Next Gate Tech’s cutting-edge solutions that help financial institutions streamline their processes, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.
Next Gate Tech’s data management, insights and analytics technology is used by various fund industry players across the value chain, such as banks, asset managers, and other financial services providers, to optimise their operations, comply with regulatory requirements and enhance their customer experience.
SME lender Triver secures £7m ($8.6m) in funding
Triver, which offers short-term working capital loans to SMEs, has raised £7m in a funding round.
Investors in Triver include Stride, Axeleo Capital, Motive Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. The FinTech company is also backed by Triver’s non-executive director Dan Cobley, as well as other unnamed angel investors.
By leveraging open banking data and AI, Triver can instantly and automatically underwrite the risk of small business borrowing. SMEs can access finance equivalent to up to 20% of their annual turnover, instantly, and at a more competitive rate than other small business finance options, it said.
Triver combines AI and digital processing to offer a seamless customer experience. It is designed to be embedded within digital services providers already serving SMEs, such as accounting platforms, digital banks, payment providers, and procurement tools.
Authorisation software firm Cerbos secures $7.5m
Cerbos, an adaptive authorisation software firm, has secured $7.5m in a seed funding round and launched Cerbos Cloud.
Cerbos is an open-source authorization layer to implement roles and permissions in software applications. It separates authorisation logic from the core application code, making the authorization layers more scalable, more secure and easier to change as the complexity grows. Cerbos Cloud streamlines the implementation and management of authorization policies.
Cerbos was founded in 2021 with the mission to make authorisation simpler to implement and manage so developers can focus on building their core products and driving business value. Later that year, Cerbos introduced its open-source authorization solution.
The company said it takes a unique stateless approach which enables limitless scale. As application usage and authorization logic complexity grows, Cerbos can be scaled up to handle the increased volume without any limits or additional infrastructure.
At the same time, Cerbos said it takes a policy-based approach that keeps all authorization rules centralised and manageable, decoupling it from the codebase. This enables roles and permissions rules to be updated without rewriting code, all while maintaining strong audit logs, a requirement for regulated industries.
Cerbos Cloud simplifies the process of managing authorization policies, testing changes and distributing updates in real-time. It is a scalable solution for developers who want to save time, streamline their workflows and confidently roll out authorization updates, letting them focus on delivering great products and improving the end-user experience.
Evergrow raies $7m for its clean energy tax credits platform
Evergrow, an all-in-one platform for clean energy tax credits, has raised $7m in its second round of financing.
Existing Evergrow investors First Round Capital, XYZ Venture Capital, Congruent Ventures, and Garuda Ventures, joined the new investment round. The fresh capital brings Evergrow’s total capital raised to $14m.
The capital injection will help Evergrow expand its diligence, risk management, and transactional capabilities to support the market with access to energy projects and tax credits.
Evergrow claims to have over $150m worth of clean energy projects on its platform that are expected to come online over the next year.
The FinTech attributes its recent growth to the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest investment in clean energy and climate protection in American history. The law allocates hundreds of billions of dollars toward investment in clean energy. Nearly all the funding comes in the form of tax credits, it said.
Developers of clean energy projects generate tax credits whenever they build a new project, and these are then sold to fund costs. By purchasing these clean energy tax credits, Evergrow and its partners provide critical funding for these projects, unlocking the full potential of the IRA.
In 2022, the tax equity market was estimated at $20bn, and this is expected to double by 2024, Evergrow said.
Japanese FinTech startup Bloomo scores $7m for US stock investing app
Japanese FinTech company Bloomo, an asset building app based on US stocks and ETFs, has reportedly raised JPY 800m ($7m) in its seed round.
The investment was backed by Global Brain, SMBC Venture Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Partners, Spiral Capital, Scrum Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners and Mizuho Capital, according to a report from Tech in Asia.
Bloomo is on a mission to become Japan’s first securities firm that is focused on long-term asset building by offering users asset-based building opportunities through investments in US stocks and ETFs.
Through its mobile app, users can select US stocks and ETFs and create a portfolio for regular investments. The investment platform is designed for people of all investing experience and fosters a community where users can interact and share useful information.
According to the report from Tech in Asia, Bloomo has applied for the registration for securities companies, with plans to launch its product in the summer. A waitlist is available for people to join.
Global Brain stated it will support Bloomo’s product development efforts.
Business account for ecommerce firm Floodlight bags $6.4m
Floodlight, a smart business account for ecommerce, has raised $6.4m in a seed funding round headed by Aleph.
The round also saw participation from 83 North, Christopher North, former Shutterfly CEO and Amazon UK Managing Director, Yuval Samet, CEO of RiseUp and former CPO of Klarna, and Juan Lobato, Founder and CEO of Ebury.
Floodlight’s smart business account allows e-commerce SMEs to connect this plethora of financial platforms to one intuitive dashboard to effectively manage their finances and grow their businesses. The solution’s dedicated financial insights built on these connections provides businesses with clarity into their finances, reports on cash flow trends, and enables customers to turn insights into action via banking services.
Users can seamlessly connect the platforms of their choice, such as their Shopify store, bank accounts, PayPal, to tap into relevant data that further strengthens their personalised insights. Beyond tech, Floodlight clients have 24/7 access to human support, including financial coaching from a customer success team that specialises in e-commerce. Customers can also utilise Floodlight Debit Mastercards with unlimited 1% cash back to promote their profitable growth.
Risk management platform YellowBird bags $6.25m
YellowBird, an EHS and risk management technology platform, has raised $6.25m in an oversubscribed seed round.
The funding round was led by Rebalance Capital and Manifold Group, and joined by QBE, Nationwide’s Venture Cap.
YellowBird is a comprehensive EHS and Risk Management platform that aims to simplify the complex and fragmented world of safety and loss control management.
The company said it has grown exponentially in the past two years, with sourced jobs in 42 states. YellowBird has achieved 2x year-over-year revenue and supply growth two years in a row with Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) professional flex workers.
The risk management’s platform customer list features Fortune 100 companies, including Nationwide and QBE Insurance, along with major brands in manufacturing, construction and energy.
According to YellowBird, the funding will help it continue on its growth trajectory, further invest in building technology, and accelerate its customer acquisition and marketplace strategy.
YellowBird plans to hire engineering team members to continue developing advanced technology, growing the customer success team to improve client satisfaction and invest in sales and marketing advancements.
On-chain finance startup Fractal bags $6m in seed round
Fractal, an infrastructure provider enabling institutions to clear, settle and margin digital assets on-chain, has scored $6m in seed financing.
The round was led by Hack VC and saw participation from 6th Man Ventures, Archetype Ventures, Avalanche Ecosystem Fund Blizzard, Circle Ventures, CMT Digital, CoinShares, GoldenTree Asset Management, QCP Capital, Spartan Group, as well as a flurry of angel investors.
The funding will be used to continue launching institutional-grade products that facilitate capital efficiency, transparency, as well as a simplified user journey.
Automatic vulnerability fixer Mobb closes seed round
Mobb, an automatic vulnerability fixer, has secured $5.4m in its seed funding round, which was led by angel investor Ariel Maislos.
Other commitments came from MizMaa Ventures, Cyber Club London and unnamed backers from US, EU and Israel.
Alongside the seed funding, Mobb has released a free community version that allows developers to try its automated vulnerability remediation technology.
Mobb pointed to research that claims 60% of data breaches are caused by a failure to apply vulnerability patches and around 70% of applications contain at least one vulnerability after five years in production. This situation has manifested because the vulnerability remediation process is broken, Mobb explained.
Most organisations are leveraging Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools to uncover vulnerabilities and a single scan can have thousands of reported findings. This can be overwhelming for teams, with a single vulnerability taking between 30 minutes and several hours to resolve and cost organisations a lot of resources, it said.
To address the issue, Mobb automates vulnerability remediations to significantly reduce security backlogs and free developers to focus on innovation.
Aussie FinTech Waave locks in $4.7m seed
Waave, a Sydney-based FinTech that uses open banking technology, has raised $4.7m in a seed round backed by key angel investors.
The funding round was backed by Morten Belling – the managing director of Menulog – as well as ecommerce investor Paul Greenberg.
Founded in 2022, Waave is a payment app that enables customers to manage their finances from one unified place.
According to Business News Australia, the company’s flagship product is Pay by Bank, which claims to be the first payment platform offering Open Banking to both B2B and B2C clients.
Pay by Bank takes a flat 28 cent transaction fee, which makes it up to 80% cheaper than card payments processing an average cart value of $100. The service requires no passwords and instead uses authentication methods like FaceID and TouchID to approve transactions.
The platform works across all Australian banks and allows customers to make payments both online and in-store.
Later this year, Waave plans to roll out its services to key enterprise e-commerce customers both online and in-store across Australia.
Anti-fraud collaboration platform FiVerity locks in $4m seed
FiVerity, a creator of an anti-fraud collaboration platform, has raised $4m in a seed funding round headed by Mendon Venture Partners.
Also taking part in the round are FinCapital, Mendoza Ventures, Service Provider Capital, and Grasshopper Bank.
FiVerity said it has worked closely with financial institutions, regulators and organisations such as the US Federal Reserve and FinCEN throughout the development of its innovative anti-fraud collaboration platform to better understand the needs of the industry and ensure they can be addressed through its solution
With the new funding, FiVerity will expand its network of information providers and data, while introducing advanced machine learning algorithms. These will identify the methods fraudsters are using and compare patterns against those within a financial institution’s systems.
FiVerity said that through this unique approach it not only accelerates the detection of fraudulent accounts, but the sharing of these threats within the larger financial community in order to protect personally identifiable information and stop these activities before significant damage is inflicted.
Charm Solutions bags $3.5m in seed financing raise
Charm Solutions, a FinTech startup that has offices in the US and Sweden, has secured $3.5m in a seed funding round led by BootstrapLabs.
Charm is developing a trusted AI-powered SMB Credit Advisor service that leverages self-learning AI to help institutional lenders transform data into valuable insights to drive profitability and help SMBs make better business decisions.
The firm informs and advises SMB entrepreneurs about critical financing decisions, reducing the overall cost of capital, and accelerating access to liquidity to support their growth. Lenders benefit from Charm’s AI driven risk modelling tools for acquisition, underwriting and portfolio management.
Charm’s AI underwriting models and benchmarking insights, combined with its proprietary SMB Score technology, have been developed over the past 10 years. The platform is currently being used by lending institutions to make decisions for loans faster, reduce processing cycle time, and understand which loans in their portfolio need review during this period of ongoing economic volatility.
The company’s embedded finance platform produces risk models for acquisition, portfolio monitoring, SMB insights and benchmarking without the significant costs of the data scientists, IT infrastructure or the actual loan performance data. It also provides fully transparent and explainable model output for underwriting decisions. With a robust score, trained on a large population of businesses from multiple industries and geographies helping to remove biases.
Web3 payments firm Helio snares $3.3m in seed round
Helio, a company focused on simplifying the integration of blockchain-native payments, has raised $3.3m in a seed funding round.
The round was led by Peak and Lightspeed Faction, with further participation from RockawayX, Solana Labs and a group of leading angel investors.
Since launching in 2022, Helio has processed over $10m in e-commerce, NFT sales, SaaS subscriptions, content paywalls, and other payments for over 900 merchant customers and 35,000 users. Helio features in the top 50 DeFi apps across all blockchains, according to DappRadar.
Helio’s solution provides a secure and convenient way for merchants, dApps, and creators to accept instant crypto payments across multiple blockchains, including Solana, Polygon, and Ethereum. The platform offers built-in content paywalling features that allow creators, such as podcasters, YouTubers, artists, NFT projects, media, or platforms to monetize content in a new way and reach a new audience with watch-to-earn models.
The newly raised capital will be used to build out its sales and marketing teams to strike partnerships with creator platforms.
Helio will also expand its engineering team to pursue the company’s multi-chain strategy with launches planned for Bitcoin, Binance, as well as deliver an in-app wallet to enable Web2-style payment experiences and integrations.
Decentralised trading platform UXUY lands $3.2m seed
UXUY, a Singaporean next-gen MPC-based decentralised trading platform, has raised $3.3m in a seed funding round.
The round saw participation from investors such as Bixin Ventures, WaterDrip Capital, KuCoin Ventures, Pionex, LK Ventures, Arcane Group, Daoverse Capital and Lapin Digital.
Through the mnemonic-free and gas-free solutions, UXUY claims it makes it easier for users to get started and conduct cross-chain transactions with a single click.
The company plans to create a comprehensive stablecoin liquidity pool to provide users with a ‘stablecoin-centric’ trading environment and a CEX-like user experience. UXUY supports mainstream public chains, fully leverages the “wallet + transaction” and proactively participates in the building of the “Unclaimed” ecosystem.
UXUY was founded by serial entrepreneurs and backed by industry leading VCs.
Fairly AI nets $1.7m for risk management platform for AI
Fairly AI, which has built an oversight and risk management platform for AI, has reportedly raised $1.7m in fresh funding.
Seattle-based venture capital firm Flying Fish Partners served as the lead investor for the round, according to a report from BetaKit. Other backers in the round were Backstage Capital, X Factor Ventures, Loyal VC, NEXT Canada, and a few unnamed strategic angels.
Funds from this round will help Fairly AI to bolster its sales and marketing efforts.
Fairly AI supports the end-to-end process of AI model risk management. Its platform covers a range of features, including information reporting, testing, policies and built-in control to fairness and bias testing.
The platform provides companies with the tools to ensure AI systems are fair and reliable. Its technology is used by legal and audit, risk and compliance, and tech and data science teams.
Through the platform teams can collaborate, leverage parallel governance to reduce cross-team friction, and implement continuous checkpoints.
Responsible AI governance firm Trustible comes out of stealth with $1.6m
Trustible, a software firm that helps companies speed up responsible AI governance, has arisen out of stealth with $1.6m.
With a mission of maximising trust, managing regulatory and reputational risks, and offering transparency in AI applications, Trustible claims it empowers organisations to confidently adopt AI technologies in a rapidly evolving regulatory environment.
The round was led by Harlem Capital, with participation from VamosVentures, as well as a range of angel investors.
The recent financing is enabling Trustible to scale its team, accelerate growth, and further develop its product, designed to help customers seamlessly adopt Responsible AI industry standards, such as NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework, and comply with emerging regulations, including the European Union’s AI Act.
Through its platform, Trustible aims to facilitate the responsible scaling of AI initiatives and creating opportunities for competitive differentiation.
Singapore-based Betterdata secures $1.55m in seed funding
Singapore-based Betterdata, which leverages programmatic synthetic data to help preserve privacy, has reportedly secured $1.55m in seed funding.
The funding round was led by Investible, with contributions also coming from Franklin Templeton, Xcel Next, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Bon Auxilium, Tenity, Plug and Play and Entrepreneur First, according to a report from Global Village Space.
This capital injection will support Betterdata’s product launch and enhance its programmable synthetic data tech stack, including support for single-table, multi-table, and time-series datasets.
In addition to this, the FinTech company hopes to hire more staff, such as sales and marketing professionals, and expand across the Asia-Pacific region.
Founded in 2021, the company makes data sharing instant and more secure by transforming real data into limitless synthetic data that looks, behaves and feels like real data. This synthetic data does not belong to a real individual and can be shared globally with 100% compliance with privacy regulations.
Use cases for its technology include product development and testing, data collaboration, data privacy verification, data retention, data monetisation, and bias and imbalance mitigation.
Within financial services, firms can leverage Betterdata to support fraud detection within AML solutions, improve credit scoring and bolster data privacy.
Its services are used across financial services, telecommunications, healthcare and retail.
Real estate platform Proprli bags £600k funding
Proprli, a platform that enables property and asset managers to manage their real estate portfolios while complying with ESG objectives, has secured £600k.
The Dutch firm – which enables companies to comply with ESG objectives and net-zero carbon emissions targets – secured the funding from Blackfinch Ventures.
According to Proprli, this funding will accelerate Proprli’s growth, allowing them to further improve the platform and onboard key talent to execute the sales and marketing strategy.
The investment comes on the heels of Proprli’s record-breaking year in which the company more than doubled its turnover and welcomed Micha Smit as CCO to lead its commercial operations.
Founded in 2018, Proprli’s cutting-edge software streamlines property & project management, procurement, and capital management, transforming the way stakeholders manage technical building information and workflows.
The firm’s collaboration platform is a ‘game-changer’ for real estate companies facing stringent regulations, especially those related to sustainability performance. As a result, the platform has already attracted powerhouse clients.
The company is also developing a comprehensive partner program to empower property managers.
B2B BNPL FinTech Hokodo extends Series B with support from Citi
B2B BNPL and digital trade credit solution developer Hokodo has extended its Series B round with an undisclosed investment from Citi.
The FinTech company initially raised $40m in its Series B round in June 2022. The investment was led by Notion Capital, with commitments also coming from Korelya Capital, Mundi Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures, Anthemis and Mosaic Ventures
With the fresh investment from Citi, Hokodo plans to enter new geographic regions. Its services are currently available in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
In addition to the expansion efforts, the funding will help Hokodo provide more working capital to customers.
Hokodo, which is based in the UK, provides businesses with a buy now pay later service, allowing merchants to get paid upfront and buyers are able to spread the cost of a payment across various payment terms.
Unified API protection company Cequence secures investment
Cequence Security, a provider of unified API protection (UAP), has received an investment of an undisclosed amount from venture capital firm Cequence.
Cequence mentioned that Prosperity7 Ventures partners with today’s pioneers and explorers to enable continued global growth and transformation and development of next-generation technologies and business models that will bring prosperity and positive impact on a vast scale.
The Cequence UAP solution is the only offering that addresses all phases of the API protection lifecycle to defend an enterprise’s APIs from attackers and eliminate unknown and unmitigated API security risks that can lead to data loss, fraud, and business disruption.
Security teams deploying the UAP solution achieve continuous protection of their complete API risk surface, enabling their organisations to reap the competitive and business advantages of ubiquitous API connectivity securely while meeting regulatory compliance.
Archetype backs InsurTech PolicyBound
Archetype, a growth equity investment and consulting firm, has invested in commercial insurance technology firm PolicyBound.
PolicyBound offers a platform to fuel agency growth. The company helps commercial insurance brokers thrive in the digital age by using technology to enhance client engagement and obtain competitive advantages previously only available to an elite few.
According to Archetype, the investment will support PolicyBound’s growth and expansion plans as it aims to revolutionise the commercial insurance industry.
Archetype said it has a track record of investing in and scaling high-growth companies. The company identifies opportunities for investment through its consulting engagements, leveraging its team of 80+ product development experts and strategists to perform due diligence and provide resources such as functional knowledge, industry expertise, and distribution acceleration post-investment to enable portfolio companies to rapidly scale.
Actor and investor Ryan Reynolds backs Canadian FinTech Nuvei
Ryan Reynolds, an actor and serial investor, has announced today he has invested in Canadian FinTech firm Nuvei.
Nuvei is a global payments technology company dedicated to accelerating its customers’ revenue growth through payments. With card acquiring services in more than 200 markets, including direct local acquiring in over 47 countries, as well as access to more than 600 alternative payment methods, Nuvei connects eCommerce businesses with their customers wherever they are in the world and however they want to pay.
The company entered 2023 with strong momentum, announcing its acquisition of leading B2B and Integrated Payments Technology provider Paya in the first weeks of the year and closing the transaction in February. Incorporating Paya technology and experts into Nuvei is creating a preeminent payment technology provider in Global eCommerce, Integrated Payments and B2B.
In addition to developing new use cases for its technology, Nuvei continues to expand geographically. The company has made significant strides to grow market share in both LATAM and APAC, including recently launching local acquiring capabilities in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia.
Reynolds remarked, “I know about as much about fintech as I did about gin or mobile a few years ago. But Nuvei is impressive. The leadership team is exceedingly intelligent and hard-working and it’s about time a Canadian company got the type of attention American tech companies do.”
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