BlackFin Tech Weekly — December 6th
Dear fintech folks,
To start the week, what is more exciting than a big UK deal?
Last week, €200m was raised across 8 deals. Congratulations to Thought Machine, a UK core banking platform that raised a $200m Series C! Next up, we have Timeless, a German NFT platform that raised a €12m Venture Round! The third startup on the podium is Unlimitd, a French revenue-based financing provider which raised a €5m Seed round.
Geography-wise, most of the deals (3) came from France! The UK and Germany are next in line, with 2 deals each. Finally, we have one deal from Belgium.
Subsector-wise, we have an impressively even distribution. Indeed, we have 2 deals each in Banktech, Payments, Investment Banking and Insurtech. Wow!
Let’s dive in:
Thought Machine raised $200m:
- The company closed a large Series C round at a valuation above $1bn, thus becoming a unicorn. The round is led by US-based Nyca Partners, with other new investors including ING Ventures, JP Morgan, and Standard Chartered Ventures. Existing investors like British Patient Capital, Eurazeo, SEB, Molten Ventures, Backed, and IQ Capital also took part. Some of the investors are strategics but also Thought Machine clients like JP Morgan, Standard Chartered, SEB.
- Founded in 2014, Thought Machine is selling cloud-based banking infrastructure to traditional and challenger banks, helping some of them transition from their legacy IT infrastructure to a more modern one. The fresh funding will be used to develop the flagship SaaS product Vault, a cloud platform enabling banks to offer a set of retail banking services like checking accounts, savings accounts, loans, credit cards, or mortgages.
- To support its fast-paced growth, the company has added more than 200 employees since 2020.
Timeless raised €12m:
- The German NFT platform closed its Venture Round led by EQT Ventures, and followed by existing investors like C3, La Roca, and Porsche Ventures.
- Launched in February 2021, Timeless allows users to acquire shares in upmarket assets like artwork, rare sneakers, watches, luxury cars, or fashion items. It acquires items, fractionalizes them using blockchain technology and distributes them on a blockchain protocol, allowing to fully trace each transaction.
- The platform currently has 75,000 users and sold 62 assets, including Banksy artwork and a Michael Jordan sneakers collection.
Unlimitd raised €5m:
- French BNPL platform Unlimitd raised its Seed Round with four business angels : Michael Cohen, Michel de Guilhermier, Ilan Elbase and Jordan Zeitoun.
- Launched just six months ago, Unlimitd offers companies financing based on their future revenues, in return for a fixed percentage of those future revenues. Its scoring system has been built in-house and promises a validation process of fewer than 48 hours.
- The company has 12 clients in the SaaS and B2B industries and intends to recruit 12 more employees by the end of the year.
Congrats also to Jump, Brickwise, Penbox, Lyanne, and Bankifi.
See you next week!
