Oct 4, 2023

Weekly Funding Highlights – 4 October 2023 New week – new closed funding rounds. This week’s funding highlights cover start-ups, fintechs, cybersecurity tech, RegTechs, and many more! Take a look at some major investments of this week. Greylock secures $1B  for its 17th fund amid launch of early-stage founders program Greylock Partners unveiled two new endeavors Tuesday: A $1 billion early-stage fund — its 17th — and Greylock Edge, a program to support founders developing ideas into companies with early revenue and product market fit. In keeping with the venture capital firm’s thesis, Greylock 17 will target pre-seed, seed and Series A founders in the areas of enterprise and consumer software, Greylock partner Saam Motamedi told TechCrunch. Read more Brite Payments secures $60m (€57m) Sweden-based fintech Brite Payments has announced the raise of USD 60 million in funding round in order to accelerate instant bank payments across Europe. Following this announcement, the firm is set to use the funds in order to accelerate its overall geographic expansion development, as well as strengthen its presence in already existing markets. At the same time, Brite Payments will invest further in the process of optimising its product portfolio. Read more Stitch raises $25M  (€23.8m) Series A extension led by Ribbit Capital, increasing the round’s total to $46M Open banking, in which traditional banks release their data via application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable the development of new financial services for their consumers, has been one of the most significant disruptions in global payments over the past decade. Less than five years ago, this innovation, in which businesses use APIs to access customers’ financial accounts and provide an array of integrated and embedded financial services, took on in Africa. Read more UK Neobanking Fintech Perenna Secures £42M (€48.4m) to Support Mortgages Launch Perenna is pleased to announce they’ve raised over £42m in our latest fundraise, which was reportedly “led by Silverstripe Investment Management, alongside participation from existing investors.” This successful fundraise is a major milestone for Perenna’s rapidly growing company, and “testament” to the great team they have. The Fintech firm will be using the funds to exclusively launch the Perenna mortgage “to selected borrowers initially, opening up to the wider public later this year. ” Read more Peach Payments secures $30m (€28.5) in funding Peach Payments, trading under Baobab Payments, has successfully closed a funding round amounting to €29m/$30m. The funding round was announced in April and managed to secure capital primarily from Apis Growth Fund II, a private equity fund operated by Apis Partners LLP, a UK-based asset manager. Specialising in offering an enterprise-level digital payment service, Peach Payments facilitates online transactions in Africa for businesses spanning various sizes. The company has adeptly carved a niche in rendering a comprehensive toolkit to manage, accept, and disburse payments through mobile and web platforms. Read more Traydstream Closes $21M (€20m) Series B Financing Traydstream, a London, UK-based fintech company working for the trade finance industry, raised $21M in Series B funding. The round was led by Pivot Investment Partners and e& capital. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its efforts at enhancing its AI-powered platform. Led by Sameer Sehgal, CEO, Traydstream provides automated trade document scrutiny and compliance checking, and risk management solutions to empower financial institutions and corporates to streamline trade finance operations, reduce risks, and enhance efficiency. Read more PortX raises $16.5m (€15.7) in Series B funding round The round was co-led by venture capital firm Fuse and credit union collective Curql, which were joined by BankTech Ventures, EJF Capital and the Btech Consortium – all financial services-focused investment firms representing nearly 200 community financial institutions. The company’s latest round of funding succeeds its $10 million Series A of September 2022. With the fresh funding, PortX says it will “concentrate on transformative initiatives” which will benefit both community banks and credit unions, through product development, enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) offerings and automation features, and expansion of PortX’s marketplace to accelerate “fintech connectivity”. Read more Apron Raises $15M (€14.2m) in Series A Funding Apron, a London, UK-based provider of a fintech platform for small businesses to reduce time spent processing invoices, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Visionaries Club. Jan Hammer, an Index partner, joined the board. The company intends to use the funds to expand its offering to SMEs and their accountants, and roll out new automatic invoice capturing features, as well as to grow its 20-strong team. Led by CEO and Founder Bogdan Uzbekov, Apron enables business owners and accountants to sort, pay and reconcile invoices in seconds. Read more Amsterdam-based Orquesta secures €800K for its all-in-one LLM operations and integration platform Amsterdam-based Orquesta has secured €800K in its oversubscribed pre-seed funding round. The startup, located in Amsterdam, developed one of Europe’s first platforms integrating various Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, and configuration management. The funding round was led by AI investor Curiosity VC and was supported by Spacetime (the investment office of Adriaan Mol), Golden Egg Check Capital, Magnetic Fund, Koen Köppen, and other angel investors. Read more – Do you have any news to share: please put  feed@hollandfintech.com  on your press list. Curious to read and find out more from fintech? Then subscribe & read our full newsletters  here. In order to see our other weekly highlights, check out the following links:  analysis & opinion ,  research . Share this Article