It’s a frenzy of fintech action with Thought Machine, Modulr and Circit nabbing funding in London and beyond.
Thought Machine, a cloud native banking technology company, has closed its Series D funding round, to double its valuation to $2.7 billion (£2.2 billion).
Modulr, an embedded payments platform for digital businesses, has raised $108 million (£83 million) in Series C funding led by General Atlantic.
Circit, an audit confirmations and open banking platform, has completed a €6.5 million (£5.5 million) Series A funding round.
Keen on Thought Machine
London-based Thought Machine is one busy fintech firm. The funding round was led by Temasek with participation from Intesa Sanpaolo and Morgan Stanley. Existing investors following-on in this round include Eurazeo, ING, JP Morgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group and SEB.
The round follows on from the £40 million invested by Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo in February – which gets a mention again in the official May announcement – and $200 million (£149.7 million) in Series C funding in November 2021.
Funds will be used for expansion in Asia Pacific, such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Thought Machine has recently opened a new office in Sydney to expand its operations in Australia, and is opening a new office in Miami for the Latin American market.
Thought Machine has made various appointments, namely, former Bank of America and Finastra finance leader Arnaud Attamian as Chief Financial Officer, and former SAP and Box sales leader Dana Barisano as Chief Revenue Officer.
The company’s core banking platform Vault Core is developed natively for the cloud. Clients include Intesa Sanpaolo, Lloyds, ING, SEB and Standard Chartered.
Thought Machine has also secured deals with mortgage & loan provider Together in the UK, HD Bank in Vietnam, Magyar Bankholding in Hungary, Mascoma Bank in the US, Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia and Danish company Lunar.
Popular Modulr
Modulr is headquartered in London. The API-loving firm says the round also included “significant” participation from existing investors, such as Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, Highland Europe and PayPal Ventures.
Aaron Goldman, Managing Director and Co-Head of Financial Services at General Atlantic, states: “Modulr has built a bridge between payments infrastructure and businesses who want to embed fintech into their products. Modulr enables clients to move money more efficiently, create accounts quicker, simplify processes and integrate what were historically thought of as ‘traditional financial’ services into their own product offerings.”
According to Modulr, it provides payments infrastructure via its APIs for over 200 customers, including Revolut, Wagestream, Sage and BrightPay. Modulr now processes an annualised transaction value of more than £100 billion.
The fintech company intends to use the funding to look for more action in the UK and Europe.
Modulr has 300+ staff and offices in Edinburgh, Dublin and Amsterdam.
Money Haul and the Flying Circit
Circit’s HQ is in Dublin, and it has a presence in the UK, EU, US, Australia and Hong Kong. The investment is co-led by Aquiline Technology Growth and MiddleGame Ventures.
According to the fintech entity, it helps auditors to verify company assets and liabilities in real-time. Its platform is regulated for open banking under the PSD2 regulation.
David Heath, CEO of Circit, comments: “The platform frees up auditors from manual and time-consuming processes, providing automation for third-party confirmations, as well as verified insights on bank and digital asset transactions.”
Founded in 2017, Circit has created a network of validated banks, lawyers, large corporates and SMEs who joined the platform to communicate with auditors during their search of a company’s banking arrangements and potential legal liabilities held on its balance sheet.
Its customers include the big four accounting firms, and 19 of the top 20 accounting networks in “most European countries”. The company plans to broaden its UK and Ireland operations, doubling headcount from 35 to 70 over the next 12 months, and continuing its expansion into several new (unspecified) international markets.
