The largest this week:
🇺🇸 Digital Currency Group, which owns Grayscale Investments and CoinDesk, raised $700 million at a $10 billion valuation in the second-largest funding ever in crypto. Its portfolio of early-stage crypto and DeFi companies has already raised more than $800M in 2021.
🇬🇧 Monzo is raising £300M at a £3.0B valuation. It would be a 2.5x increase in valuation despite a set of setbacks such as the withdrawal of its banking application in the US.
🇬🇭 African cross-border payments company Chipper Cash has raised a $150M Series C extension at a $2B valuation, led by crypto exchange FTX. Moving money across the African continent is still slow and expensive making it one of the fastest-growing market for crypto adoption.
🇺🇸 Alchemy just closed a $250M series C led by A16z, increasing its valuation by a staggering 7x over a six-month period. Put simply, Alchemy wants to do for blockchain and Web3 what AWS did for the internet. Sweden-based Moralis also just raised an $11.5M seed round to simplify DeFi and Web 3.0 development.
🇮🇳 Amazon-backed insurtech Acko raised $255M and joined the Indian unicorn club. This makes it the 3rd most valuable Indian insurtech on the heels of its competitor PolicyBazaar.com which was last valued at $2.4B in March and is looking to go public next week raising over $800M.
🇬🇧 Storfund, a startup that helps e-commerce sellers drive sales and increase profitability by shortening their cash cycle through cash advances, has raised £100M from Fasanara Capital, with the option to extend the funding up to £300M. Fasanara Capital has been very active in backing e-commerce lending platforms such as Scalapay and Fundsquire.
🇺🇸 CoinList, a token sale platform popular among cash-hungry crypto projects and early investors alike, has raised $100 million at a $1.5B valuation in its first equity round in nearly two years.
Other notable fintech deals from around the globe:
🇮🇳 Clear (ex ClearTax), which helps individuals and businesses file their tax returns, raised a $75M Series C at a $750M valuation with participation from Stripe. Stripe has definitely turned its eyes on India, going from zero activity to two investments and one acquisition just in less than a month.
🇮🇹 Viceversa, a provider of growth capital revenue-based financing, has come out of stealth raising a €23M Seed round (€3M in equity and €20M in debt).
🇺🇸 nameless, a developer of leading API software for the issuance, testing, and sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), closed a $15M seed round led by Mechanism Capital at a $75M valuation. Discover other startups helping brands and creators set up NFTs stores such as Bitsky and NFTically in our global NFT mapping.
🇳🇿 Online investment platform Sharesies has raised $50 million at a $500M valuation. The investment doubled the $25M raised last December. Retail trading platforms have raised almost $7B this year. Discover 80+ companies in the sector.
Read up on all the latest fintech deals in Dealroom.co
Notable exits:
🇸🇪 Klarna has acquired the Swedish comparison site Pricerunner for €930m to broaden its shopping experience. Klarna does not want to be just a "marketplace but a viable and competitive alternative for retail partners vs Amazon, Google and Facebook.” This is the 7th acquisition for Klarna this year.
🇸🇬 Hoolah, APAC's leading BNPL player, has been acquired by the shopping and rewards platform ShopBack to build the world’s most rewarding commerce enablement platform. They plan to reach 30m shoppers, powering half a billion shopping trips to 8,000+ merchants across nine markets in the Asia-Pacific.
Read up on all the latest fintech exits in Dealroom.co
