Deals in brief

Buy-now-pay-later startup Zilch has become a unicorn after closing a $110m Series C funding round at a $2bn valuation. Now the founder says the Klarna challenger plans to expand to the US – and that it can claim to be Europe’s fastest growing startup.

“We went from Series A to unicorn in 14 months, which is officially the fastest if you’ve seen any company go from series A to unicorn [in Europe],” Zilch CEO Philip Belamant tells Verdict.

Zilch raised a $7.54m Series A round in September 2020 and then topped up its coffers in April 2021 with an $80m Series B round at a $500m valuation.

GoTo Group, Indonesia’s largest technology firm formed by the merger of Gojek and Tokopedia, has raised $1.3bn in a pre-IPO funding round. The near-$30bn company is preparing for a dual listing IPO in the US and Indonesia, with reports suggesting this could come as soon as the first half of 2022.

New investors in the GoTo funding round include Primavera Capital, Permodalan Nasional Bhd and Fidelity International. Existing backers Google, Tencent and Temasek also participated in the funding round. The round was led by Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which invested $400m in GoTo last month.

Gorillas has raised “close to” $1bn in a funding round that gives the rapid grocery delivery startup a valuation of $2.1bn. The funding round – the largest by a European startup in the sector – highlights the growing appetite for on-demand delivery services but also such companies’ dependence on large volumes of venture capital.

Berlin-based Gorillas aims to deliver basic grocery items ordered via an app within 10 minutes, charging a flat delivery fee of €1.80.

The new Series C round has given it a $2.1bn private valuation just one year after it was founded by CEO Kağan Sümer in May 2020.

The long foretold AI winter may not be here yet, but autumn may be upon the sector as data trends are starting to show that the number of funding deals is falling. However, AI startup H2O.ai has just shown that investment in AI is still happening with a $100m funding round at a $1.7bn valuation: and overall, money flowing into AI is still up.

The cloud company markets itself as a venture enabling other businesses to develop their own AI solutions via its open-source framework and proprietary apps. The Series E round was led by Australian lender, Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Other investors include Pivot Investment Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Crane Venture Partners.

German online bank N26 has raised $900m in a Series E funding round at a valuation of more than $9bn. The round was co-led by tech investors Third Point Ventures and Coatue Management. Dragoneer Investment Group also joined the round along with N26’s existing investors.

The latest funding has made N26, which was founded in 2013, one of the highest valued fintech firms in Europe. N26 will use the funds to expand its mobile banking offering. It also plans to onboard 1,000 new team members in the coming years, with a focus on the areas of product, technology, and cybersecurity.

Fintech developer platform TrueLayer has just become the UK’s newest unicorn after closing a $130m round backed by payment giant Stripe.

The open banking company’s new round was led by new investor Tiger Global Management and gave the startup a post-money valuation of more than $1bn. Tiger Global has previously backed fintech giants like Flipkart, Nubank and Square.

The news comes hot on the heels of TrueLayer securing a $70m Series D cash injection in April. Its newly minuted unicorn status is a testament to the growing importance of open banking.

Cloud native fintech Pismo has just secured a $108m Series B round led by SoftBank, Amazon and Accel to expand its DevOps services to banks and startups across the world.

While that means squaring off against rival DevOps platforms, Pismo’s new international CEO is bullish about the startup’s chances. That’s hardly surprising given Vishal Dalal joined the banking and payment services venture in February to spearhead Pismo’s international expansion.