Revolut valued at $33bn after $800m fundraising
Digital bank becomes the UK’s most valuable fintech
Revolut, the London-based digital banking start-up, has raised $800m in a funding round that makes it the UK’s most valuable fintech.
The deal, led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global Management, values the six-year-old company at $33bn (£23.9bn), a sixfold increase compared with its last fundraising in early 2020. The company is now worth more than NatWest, one of the UK’s so-called big four retail banks.
The rapid increase highlights insatiable demand from investors for fast-growing companies, which has renewed concerns about overheating in private tech markets. Investors poured almost as much money into private start-ups in the first half of this year as they did in the whole of 2020.
Mikko Salovaara, Revolut’s chief financial officer, said the company did not need to raise money, but added “the environment for raising is very strong and we had a lot of investor interest” so it decided to take advantage of the opportunity.
Revolut’s net losses widened from £107m to £168m last year, but it began to break even in the final two months of the year. Salovaara said it had been “strongly profitable” in the first quarter of 2021.