Led · Equity · Feb 2022

Akulaku is a fintech company headquartered in Jakarta that was founded in 2016. The company employs between 1,001 and 5,000 people. Akulaku has raised a total of $480M to date. Its core business is in financial services as a fintech provider. The company plans to use recent funding to support expansion and product innovation. Akulaku recently secured a significant debt facility to bolster its position in the competitive financial landscape. Akulaku is a Jakarta-based fintech that offers a virtual credit card, installment shopping (BNPL), an investment platform and a neobank across Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. Founded in 2016, the company has pursued strategic partnerships—its backers include Ant Group and it launched a BNPL partnership with Alipay+. Akulaku targets serving 50 million users by 2025. The product suite centers on consumer credit and digital banking services, plus investment offerings. The company has been raising strategic capital to expand products and geographic reach in 2023. The recent MUFG investment is intended to support technology, product development, financing and distribution in Southeast Asia. Akulaku is an Indonesia-based fintech that provides buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), consumer finance, digital banking, consumer credit, digital investing, and insurance brokerage services to underbanked customers. Founded in 2014, it operates across Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In 2021 the company said it had disbursed over $2.2 billion in credit to more than 10 million people. The company's overall income is estimated to have risen 120% to $597 million, driven by its wealth management, e-commerce, and digital banking platforms. Akulaku plans to expand and improve its loan portfolio in its core markets using new financing. The firm cites a large underbanked population in the region—about half unbanked and 18% underbanked—as the market opportunity it aims to serve. Akulaku is an Indonesian fintech startup that offers digital banking services and brokers insurance. Its mobile banking service has about 13 million users in Indonesia. The company counts Jack Ma's Ant Group among its investors. Akulaku plans to expand its offerings across Southeast Asia with a target of reaching 50 million users by 2025. The article does not disclose revenue, valuation, or specific financial terms beyond the announced investment. The reporting situates the investment within SCB's broader regional expansion strategy. Akulaku is an Indonesia-focused online financial services platform that began as a virtual credit card enabling installment purchases and has since diversified into a broader suite of financial services. The company is investing IDR 500 billion (US$35.4M) into Bank Yudha Bhakti (BYB) in a three-stage transaction to be completed by year-end; the first stage involved acquiring Gozco Capital’s BYB shares for IDR 158 billion (US$11.8M), equivalent to 8.95% of Gozco’s BYB shares. Akulaku says the partnership will speed up BYB’s digital transformation and expand the bank’s business into individual loans and services for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Company leaders framed the move as a combination of Akulaku’s technology with BYB’s banking license and operations. Collaborating with a licensed bank offers legal benefits and access to services and data restricted to full banking institutions. Akulaku most recently raised a US$100M Series D led by Ant Financial; CrunchBase lists total funding at US$220M and DailySocial reported an approximate valuation of about US$500M.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2022

Sygnum is a crypto-focused bank and lender based in Zug and Singapore and licensed in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore. The firm provides regulated digital-asset banking services and positions itself around Bitcoin technology. It closed an oversubscribed $58 million strategic growth round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. About a year earlier Sygnum raised $40 million at a $900 million valuation. The new capital is earmarked to expand the bank’s entry into the European market and to initiate a regulated presence in Hong Kong. Sygnum also plans to broaden its product base with a focus on Bitcoin technology and to prepare for acquisitions. Sygnum is a global digital asset banking group that provides institutional-grade security, personalised service and a portfolio of regulated digital-asset banking, asset management, tokenisation and B2B services. The group is led by Group CEO Mathias Imbach and serves professional and institutional investors, banks, corporates and DLT foundations. Sygnum holds a banking licence in Switzerland and has CMS and Major Payment Institution licences in Singapore; it is also regulated in Abu Dhabi and Luxembourg. The company recently completed an interim close of a financing round, raising more than USD 40M at a USD 900M post-money valuation. Sygnum intends to use the proceeds to expand into new markets and further extend its suite of regulated products and services in the digital asset industry. The firm emphasises building trust via regulation and governance across market cycles. Sygnum offers a fully regulated suite of integrated digital-asset financial products including bank-grade digital asset custody and fiat rails, spot and options trading, cryptocurrency-backed fiat loans, asset management products, asset tokenization solutions and B2B banking for regulated institutions. The company holds a Swiss banking license and a Singapore asset management licence, positioning it to serve institutional clients and regulated partners. Operationally, Sygnum reported a tenfold increase in consolidated gross revenues in 2021, an institutional client base nearing 1,000, and assets under administration of over $2 billion. Employees, co-founders, board members and management are shareholders and continue to hold majority ownership of the firm. Future product plans focus on institutional-grade Web 3.0 offerings: additional yield-generating products (including white-listed DeFi pools and expanded staking services), asset management solutions for DeFi innovations, and new commercial partnerships with blockchain ecosystems such as the Dfinity Foundation. The company intends to use new capital to expand into additional global markets and to grow its Singapore hub operations while co-creating and distributing products with strategic investors. Sygnum operates a digital asset banking platform serving private qualified and institutional investors, banks, and other financial institutions. The company reported assets under administration of over half a billion USD as of January 2021. Sygnum completed a strategic fundraising round that included an eight-figure USD investment from SBI Digital Asset Holdings and, together with other recent raises, has kept operations well-capitalized. It has tokenized its own shares, laying foundations for a potential future public offering. Sygnum plans to use proceeds to grow assets under administration, expand its client base, accelerate new product and service launches, and enter new markets in Europe and Asia. The firm operates from Switzerland and Singapore and emphasizes a cost-efficient approach to bringing its platform to market. Sygnum builds regulated infrastructure to securely issue, store, trade and manage digital assets, including tokenised shares and investment products. It has founded a joint venture with Swisscom, CUSTODIGIT AG, to develop institutional investor-grade custody solutions. In partnership with daura, Sygnum is developing issuance and settlement capabilities, including a fiat-digital gateway and the tokenization of Swiss SME shares. The company is developing products simultaneously in Switzerland and Singapore, initially targeting qualified/accredited and institutional investors and later offering bank-to-bank technology solutions to other financial institutions. Sygnum was founded by an interdisciplinary Swiss and Singaporean team and is backed by institutions and individuals including Philipp Hildebrand and Peter Wuffli. The firm has received an investment from Singtel Innov8 and is focusing on delivery of its integrated digital-asset ecosystem.

Participated · Series D · Jul 2021

Fireblocks provides a SaaS-like custody platform that lets financial institutions run their own secure wallets and custody across 25 blockchains while enabling peer-to-peer transactions between clients. Its customers include Bank of New York Mellon, BlockFi and eToro, and the company also offers strategic consulting and DeFi custody integrations such as Aave Arc. Fireblocks scaled rapidly in 2021, growing its client base from 100 to 800, doubling assets secured on its platform to $2 trillion, and growing revenue roughly 600% to a year-end figure between $50 million and $100 million. About 200 of its 800 clients use its DeFi extensions, and DeFi accounted for roughly 10% of its transaction volume in the past month. The company plans to use new proceeds to double its 300-person team by the end of 2022 with hiring focused on engineers and customer success, and to expand into regions including Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa as regulations permit. Fireblocks was founded in 2018 and positions itself as a broad digital-asset infrastructure provider differentiated by security, multi-chain support and a customer network for inter-client transactions. Fireblocks provides an all-in-one platform that lets financial institutions store, transfer, issue and tokenize digital assets, including custody services secured with multiparty computation. The company’s platform supports issuance of asset-backed tokens and can be white‑labeled so banks and businesses can implement direct custody without third parties. Fireblocks says it has secured the transfer of over $1 trillion in digital assets and serves over 500 financial institutions, up from about 150 in January. Its ARR grew roughly 350% year-to-date in 2021 versus 2020 and the company expects to end the year up 500%; total capital raised since its 2018 inception is $489M. Fireblocks operates offices across the UK, Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, France and the DACH region and counts customers including Revolut, BlockFi, Celsius, Galaxy Digital and crypto.com. The company plans to use new funding to expand engineering and customer-success teams and to grow geographically in the Asia‑Pacific region while remaining independent. Fireblocks provides institutional crypto infrastructure including custody, transfers, token issuance, staking and DeFi integrations. The company does not have a consumer-facing product and sells to banks, fintechs and other financial institutions seeking crypto custody and balance-sheet diversification. It uses multi-party computation to manage private keys, generating cryptographic secrets on both client devices and servers to avoid a single point of failure. Fireblocks stores $400 billion in cryptocurrencies and has built a network of liquidity partners with direct connections to 30 exchanges to support OTC desks and market makers. The platform also supports token issuance across multiple blockchains, staking via partners such as Staked and Blockdaemon, a DeFi API, and AML integrations with Elliptic and Chainalysis. Financially, Fireblocks has raised $179 million to date and says it has not yet reached a valuation of $1 billion. Fireblocks provides infrastructure that enables enterprises and institutions to adopt, move and manage digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Since launching in June 2019, the company has facilitated the transfer of over $150 billion in digital assets for customers including Revolut, Celsius, BlockFi, PrimeTrust, Genesis and Nexo. CEO Michael Shaulov said Fireblocks saw a 533% increase in customer growth in Q3. The company was founded in Tel Aviv and is headquartered in New York City, and has opened offices in Germany, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. The new capital will be used to grow the team and expand into other fintech products. Over the next year Fireblocks plans to explore innovations in digital payments, banking, transactions and the security of the digital-asset ecosystem. Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform that secures digital assets in transit for financial institutions. It streamlines digital asset trading operations without sacrificing security, using patent-pending chip isolation security and MPC technology. The platform can securely transfer assets across exchanges, wallets, custodians, and counterparties while keeping them readily available. Customers include large institutional digital asset trading operators such as Galaxy Digital and Genesis Global Trading. Fireblocks is integrated with 15 digital asset exchanges and supports over 180 cryptocurrencies, tokens, and stablecoins. The company launched out of stealth with a $16M Series A financing.

Participated · Series D · Jun 2020

Pagaya Technologies builds AI-driven product solutions for the financial ecosystem, focusing on expanding its network of lending and investor partners. The company recently pre-announced full-year 2023 results with Network Volume exceeding $8.2 billion and Adjusted EBITDA above $75 million, implying an annualized run-rate Adjusted EBITDA of over $110 million based on Q4 2023. Pagaya plans to use new financing to invest in product innovation and grow its network with both existing and new lending and investor partners. In the prior four months it secured four new lending partners, including a top bank and a top auto captive, expected to drive transformational network expansion. The company emphasizes transforming the consumer finance ecosystem as it scales and extends its corporate debt maturity to 2029. Pagaya builds AI and advanced-analytics infrastructure to increase access to financial products and services across its network. The company leverages machine learning to power origination and credit solutions and has expanded via strategic acquisitions, including its January 2023 purchase of Darwin Homes to extend its SFR platform. Pagaya says it is pursuing further M&A to combine complementary, founder-led fintechs into a broader integrated offering. Management expects to be at the high end of or exceed its Q1 2023 guidance for Network Volume, Total Revenue and Other Income, and Adjusted EBITDA. Year-to-date the company has executed approximately $2.0 billion of capital raises in the asset-backed securitization market, and it reports an expanding and diversifying investor base. GIC has increased its investment and extended its fund agreement for three more years, supporting Pagaya’s growth plans. Pagaya is a fintech that uses machine learning and big data analytics via its Pagaya Pulse platform to manage institutional money, with a focus on fixed income and alternative credit. The firm offers a variety of discretionary funds to institutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies, and banks. Since launching, Pagaya has grown to manage over $1.6 billion in assets and its total consumer credit ABS issuance has surpassed $1 billion. The company effectively reopened the consumer credit ABS market with a $200 million ABS fully managed by its AI and has completed seven ABS deals to date. Pagaya plans to use new investment to hire more data scientists, further develop its technology, and pursue new asset classes such as real estate, auto loans, mortgages, and corporate credit. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in New York and Tel Aviv. Pagaya operates an AI-driven asset management platform (Pagaya Pulse) that applies machine learning and big data analytics to underwrite and manage fixed‑income and alternative credit assets. Its asset management team of 30 data scientists and AI specialists analyzes hundreds of millions of data points and economic and market data to perform bottom-up underwriting and risk assessment. Pagaya manages $450 million for banks, insurance companies, pension funds, asset managers and sovereign wealth funds. The company recently created a $100 million consumer credit ABS fully managed by AI. Pagaya plans to use new capital to further develop its technology and expand into new asset classes such as real estate, auto loans, mortgages and corporate credit. The company was founded in 2016 and has offices in New York and Tel Aviv. Pagaya applies machine learning and big-data analytics through its Pagaya Pulse platform to manage institutional capital, with a focus on fixed income and alternative credit. The company offers discretionary funds to institutional investors including banks, insurance companies, pension funds, asset managers and high-net-worth investors. Its algorithm analyzes millions of data points to assess risk, identify emerging alternative asset classes (for example, consumer credit lending) and seek excess returns. Pagaya plans to use new funding to further develop its proprietary algorithm, enter new data-rich asset classes, expand its roughly 20-person investment team of data scientists and AI specialists, build a global sales force, and launch new investment strategies. Financially, Pagaya manages $250 million in capital and recently closed a $75 million debt financing with Citi; it also hired Ed Mallon as Chief Investment Officer. The company was co-founded in 2016 and maintains offices in New York and Tel Aviv.

Participated · Series E · Jan 2020

Currencycloud provides embedded B2B cross-border payments for platforms via a proprietary, fully cloud-based as-a-service platform. The company exposes 85 APIs across four modules—collect, convert, manage and pay—that cover the entire B2B cross-border payments workflow. Since 2012 it has processed over $50 billion in cross-border payments and counts clients including Monzo, Starling, Revolut, Visa, Bottomline and Dwolla. At the end of last year Currencycloud launched Currencycloud Spark, a multi-currency accounts solution that lets banks and fintechs collect, store, convert and pay in more than 35 currencies. It is regulated in Europe, the U.S. and Canada and plans to add integrations with major software platforms and alternate payment methods such as mobile wallets, instant payments and cards. Currencycloud offers an API-driven payments infrastructure that enables fintechs and larger companies to send international money transfers. Its platform is used by customers including Visa, Starling Bank, Standard Bank South Africa, Travelex and Klarna. The company has processed more than $50 billion in transfers and sends money to over 180 countries. Currencycloud operates across Europe, the U.S. and Canada and employs over 200 people across offices in London, Amsterdam and New York. The firm recently completed the first tranche of a Series E, and that financing activity — including conversion of earlier debt into equity — suggests further capital and strategic partnerships may follow. Article reporting notes a possible strategic investor in Santander via its venture arm, which could signal a partnership if confirmed. Currencycloud offers an API-driven platform that handles exchange rates, funds movement and local compliance so other companies can build remittance and cross-border payment services. The company works with about 200 customers in 35 countries and says this translates to “millions” of companies and individuals using services built on its platform. Currencycloud has processed about $25 billion in payments to date and processed $6 billion last year. The business charges small margins per transaction that aggregate into meaningful revenue; a past data point and analyst math in the article suggest revenue could be around $45 million under certain margin assumptions. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its U.S. business footprint, court more customers there and build 24/7 infrastructure and support. Management said it raised more than initially targeted to avoid giving up extra equity and saw no Brexit-related fundraising pushback. Currency Cloud offers Payment Engine, an API-driven platform that handles currency conversion and cross-border money transfers for fintechs and payment businesses. Its API is used by more than 125 customers, including Azimo, TransferWise and xe.com. The company processes about $10 billion in payments annually across roughly 40 currencies and 212 countries and expects to be processing $1 billion per month by the end of 2015. Typical transactions are around $15,000–$20,000, with many reaching $1 million, and the business captures its margin on what it terms a "ten percent to twenty percent basis points" model. Currency Cloud has been expanding internationally, opening a New York office after a prior funding round, and plans to push deeper into the U.S. market. It also intends to leverage strategic investor Rakuten to aid expansion into Asia, likely the following year. The Currency Cloud offers a software-as-a-service payments engine that lets payments service providers, banks, remittance and foreign-exchange specialists connect via an API to a global payment network. Led by CEO Mike Laven, the platform is used by payments firms (Payoneer, Kantox, Azimo, TransferWise), banks (Fidor Bank, MedBank) and e-commerce solutions (Sofort, Zippcard). The company raised $10M in Series B financing to support product refinement and geographic expansion. The funding is intended to further develop the platform and accelerate entry into new markets. Silicon Valley Bank also provided an additional line of capital alongside equity backers. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article.