Uzbekistan's mobile-exclusive bank, TBC Bank Uzbekistan, has raised $37 million to bolster its footprint in the Central Asian nation.
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Digital bank Chime has reportedly filed its confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC, with an eye toward a 2025 debut.
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Louisa AI
Cold call after cold call, Rohan Doctor wasn't getting as far as he would've hoped.
The former Goldman Sachs managing director had emailed a list of digital strategy execs at banks and private equity firms to try to sell them on his startup, Louisa AI. But he only got a handful of replies back.
Two years since its launch, Louisa AI has secured about a dozen clients, including some of the biggest names in corporate America. They include Goldman Sachs, VC firm Insight Partners, and, more recently, one of the biggest AI chipmakers and a top consulting firm. But he didn't secure those contracts from cold outreach. He used his own startup's technology, which proactively prompts deal ideas based on people's personal and professional connections, to get in through the front door.
Now, Doctor wants to bring his dealmaking playbook to other startups ahead of an anticipated M&A boom.
"If we're able to close more deals through warm relationships this way, then other startups can, too," he said.
The near-term outlook for M&A activity has gotten brighter, with lower interest rates reducing the cost of borrowing. Wall Street execs are optimistic that Trump's return to the White House, and any business-friendly regulations that may come with it, will be a tailwind for dealmaking. Also, companies resetting their valuations could spur more transactions to close as price expectations align between buyers and sellers.
Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, VCs and founders are hopeful about the anticipated looser environment, which could boost tech building and dealmaking. VCs, which rely on selling startups in M&A deals for many of their returns, have been dampened by the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust stance on M&A.
Louisa AI was built to suggest potential deals based on the data it's exposed to. It ingests information about who and what employees know by plugging into company CRMs, messaging platforms like Slack and Symphony, and email providers. Since spinning out of Goldman Sachs in 2023, Louisa AI has raised $5 million in seed funding. It suggests about $1 billion in deal values per quarter, Doctor said.
It also highlights mutual connections to establish a warm introduction, which can make all the difference in the multi-billion investment banking industry built on relationships. While running the bank-solutions group at Goldman Sachs, Rohan Doctor used his network to close transactions worth tens of millions of dollars. As a startup founder, it's been a different story.
"I've tried the cold outreach and just emailing," Doctor said, adding that the startup stopped doing that after it didn't yield good results. What has worked for Doctor is realizing he knows someone who knows someone.
Louisa AI scored the chipmaker contract after the AI flagged that one of Doctor's staff used to work for someone who now worked at the chip manufacturer. With the consultancy, one of Louisa AI's investors connected Doctor with the consulting firm they used to work for. He declined to name these firms due to non-disclosure agreements.
"Everything needs to be warm when it comes to big companies doing big things with other people. It has to rely on trust," he said.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for nearly 50% of Southeast Asia’s GDP, contributing to job creation, innovation, and overall economic expansion. Nevertheless, as in other parts of the world, SMEs in Southeast Asia face challenges when it comes to sufficient working capital. In a nutshell, SMEs are typically deemed too risky for traditional banks […]
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Shares of digital payments firm MobiKwik surged 82% to ₹507.5 ($6) on their first day of trading as The Indian fintech’s $69 million IPO comes amid fierce competition from larger rivals, and it pushes MobiKwik’s market value to $464 million, well above its initial target of $250 million. This remains substantially lower than the $924 […]
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A San Francisco jury has found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing of Bob Lee, the Cash App creator and former CTO of Block, according to NBC Bay Area on Tuesday. The jury found Momeni not guilty of first-degree murder, meaning jurors decided the murder of Lee was not premeditated. Lee was […]
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Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re diving into: P.S. We’re taking time off for the holidays! TechCrunch Fintech scribe Mary Ann Azevedo will be back in your inbox on January 7. ❄️ The big story How stablecoin technology can power billions in cross-border transactions Juicyway is an African fintech that’s leveraging stablecoin technology to […]
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AstroPay has been around since 2009. The bootstrapped company currently has 320 employees and is profitable. And yet, it’s not a name that comes up often in startup news. The company originally started its life as a payment service provider focused on Latin America — an alternative payment method that you would find next to the […]
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Getting paid in cryptocurrencies may sound like a bad idea, but this could be an actually useful feature for international contractors. Remote, the company that lets you hire people and manage contractors all around the world, is introducing crypto payouts on Tuesday. Companies based in the U.S. can start paying their contractors with stablecoins in […]
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Online merchants usually pay up to 8% of every sale to companies like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe, and pass those costs on to consumers. So-called ‘account-to-account’ or ‘A2A’ payments can cut transaction fees to below 1%, saving merchants and consumers quite a bit of cash. The difficulty has been in making it seamless for both […]
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Aye Finance, a lender targeting small- and medium-sized businesses in India, is seeking to raise $171 million from its initial public offering, it disclosed in a filing Tuesday. The offering comprises a $104 million fresh share issue and a $67 million secondary sale by existing investors. Proceeds from the IPO will be used to expand […]
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Tyme Group, a South African fintech, has secured $250 million in a Series D round, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The funding was led by Nu Holdings, which owns Latin America’s most valuable fintech NuBank, investing $150 million for a 10% stake. M&G Catalyst Fund invested $50 million, while existing shareholders provided the remaining […]
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The list includes Elon Musk’s xAI, which is already valued at a staggering $24 billion, as well as a good number of other AI startups.
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Dave Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Klarna
Klarna will start testing employees in Sweden for alcohol and drugs from January, Business Insider has learned, in a sign of the company increasing its internal security ahead of an anticipated IPO.
The buy-now, pay-later firm told employees via a company Slack channel post on Monday that an external supplier would carry out the random testing to ensure it was conducted in accordance with local laws and industry standards.
The post, from Klarna's director of people and HR, Mikaela Mijatovic, said the move was "part of a larger effort to strengthen security across Klarna."
The Slack message, seen by BI, said that Klarna plans to introduce similar drug testing in other countries where it operates, "following local laws and regulations." Mijatovic added that all new hires in Sweden will undergo testing during the recruitment process, starting in January.
Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at Reavis Page Jump in Sweden, told BI that employee drug testing is generally permitted under Swedish law within the private sector. She said it is "fairly common" in the fintech and banking industry and "getting more and more common."
The announcement comes after Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of Klarna, floated the idea of randomized drug testing to staff during a September all-hands. He said the company could need to introduce some additional safeguards because, as a growing financial institution, there had been greater interest in the startup from "less favorable parts of society: criminals, different hacking groups, and so forth," according to a recording of the meeting obtained by BI.
Some of the measures he discussed included monitoring employees' locations and drug testing staffers. Siemiatkowski added, "For more senior and more sensitive roles, this could also include things like understanding your financial statements to understand if someone is in trouble or could be potentially compromised."
In Monday's internal post, Mijatovic added that Klarna would also examine how it manages company devices and shares information externally.
The Swedish fintech, once Europe's most valuable startup, has been gearing up for an IPO in the US. It announced in November that it confidentially submitted draft registration documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Klarna declined to comment.
Do you work for Klarna? Got a tip? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.
Juicyway, an African fintech that leverages stablecoin technology to power fast and cheap cross-border payments, is launching out of stealth after processing over $1 billion in transaction volume for thousands of African businesses over the last three years. The fintech claims to have processed over 25,000 transactions, generating $1.3 billion in total payment volume (TPV) […]
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Zest AI, a fintech startup revolutionizing lending with AI-driven solutions, announced today it has raised a $200 million growth investment from Insight Partners. This funding will support Zest AI’s continued efforts to improve underwriting, fraud protection, and generative AI capabilities, […]
The post Zest AI secures $200M growth funding from Insight Partners to advance AI-driven lending solutions first appeared on Tech Startups.
Upvest might not be a familiar name if you don’t pay close attention to the fintech industry, but chances are you’ve already interacted with the company’s products. Founded by Martin Kassing (pictured above), the Berlin-based startup builds a white-label investment platform that is used by some of the biggest fintech companies in Europe. Upvest clients […]
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Financial advisors have a big hurdle when it comes to finding new clients: Cold outreach rarely works. Often, the only way to find a good prospect is to tap your network for warm intros, or trawl platforms like LinkedIn, Pitchbook or ZoomInfo in hopes of landing a meeting, which may or may not convert. Eden […]
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Existing investor Vor Capital is leading the round, which also saw other previous backers CNI and Incore participating.
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