Personio, Juni and 9fin are the latest tech and fintech firms to secure some funding – with clear ambitions in the UK and US.
Personio, an HR software company for SMEs, raised pre-emptive Series E funding of $270 million (£197 million), valuing the company at $6.3 billion (£4.6 billion).
Juni, a financial companion for e-commerce entrepreneurs, secured $52 million (£38 million) in funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from FJ labs and other existing investors to add to the $21 million (£15.3 million) already raised from its Series A round in late June this year.
London-based 9fin, a provider of data, news and predictive analytics for debt capital markets, announced an £8 million Series A round to fuel its expansion into the US. The company is opening a New York office.
Personio Pushes On
The funding round for Personio was led by Greenoaks Capital Partners, with participation from Altimeter Capital and Alkeon. The Series E funding brings the total capital raised to over $500 million (£364.5 million).
Along with the funding, Personio also announced People Workflow Automation, a new category of software.
Hanno Renner, Co-Founder and CEO Personio, explains: “Now we want to help HR teams go beyond HR. Launching the People Workflow Automation category is a big step forward along this path, serving the most important asset of any business, its people. We are excited to see Europe’s SMEs thrive as they make use of this technology.”
Personio is headquartered in Munich but has big plans for the UK. In July, it expanded its footprint in the country with an upgrade to a new and larger office in London’s Soho, new senior hires, and plans to further grow the team.
It counts SMEs such as Mindful Chef, Tractable and Numan among its UK customers, as well as Premier Inn, Statista and SkyTeam internationally.
Personio senses opportunity and reckons SMEs are now using an average of 40+ applications. Large enterprises can probably handle all that with in-house IT resources but Personio wants to help smaller organisations build their own automated workflows.
Along with Munich and London, the firm has offices in Madrid, Dublin and Amsterdam,
Juni Seeks UK Action
Fintech company Juni will use the funds to triple the number of its employees and launch an integrated credit line product to its users. It plans to recruit 120 more employees in the next 12 months.
Founded in June 2020 in Gothenburg, Sweden, co-founders Samir El-Sabini (CEO), Jonathan Sanders (COO), and Anders Orsedal (CTO) have a combination of payment, banking, fintech and technical developer experience between them.
As part of its mission to profit from e-commerce businesses, it’s starting with an initial rollout in the UK, so customers will be able to access short-term credit.
El-Sabini says: “We understand their pain points and business needs in a way that traditional banking can’t, which in turn means we’re able to offer them a credit product that actually makes sense for them.”
According to Ted Persson, Partner at EQT Ventures, Juni has an average weekly growth rate of 80% in five months.
Fine Time for 9fin
9fin stands out a bit as it is neither German nor Swedish, but a UK fintech firm looking for growth abroad.
Its latest investment was led by Redalpine, alongside previous investors in the company, Fly Ventures. Angel investors Paul Forster, Co-Founder of Indeed, and Alan Morgan, Co-Founder of MMC Ventures, also participated, along with Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital and a number of high net worth individuals. To date 9fin has secured over £10 million in funding, including backing from Seedcamp and AI Seed Fund.
Co-founded by Steven Hunter and Hussam El-Sheikh, long-time friends from the University of Bristol, 9fin was created to provide intelligence for the debt capital markets community. The inspiration for the venture came from the founders’ industry experience of working within investment banking and fintech respectively.
Hunter explains: “When I worked in banking and asset management, I felt like I’d been teleported back 40 years in terms of the data and technology our market used. Finding simple things like earnings, price sensitive news flow, and key offering documents was incredibly painful. 9fin was created to fix that.”
9fin’s tech platform uses machine learning and computer vision to extract and standardise debt capital markets data in real time.
Within the last year, the company says it has quadrupled its number of clients, tripled the size of its team and partnered with the European Leveraged Finance Association on legal data and analytics. The firm says it is used by nine of the top 10 investment banks.
Along with the office in New York, 9fin is also hiring across its sales, marketing, product and engineering teams. It expects to double its current team of 30 people before the end of the year.
