The Venture Codex

Led · Series A · Oct 2025

Founded in 2021, Pagaleve offers buy-now-pay-later services aimed at the large share of Brazilians who either lack credit cards or face low card limits. Its flagship product is an interest-free pay-in-four option integrated through retailers’ checkouts, complemented by monthly plans of up to 12 installments and a “Pay Anywhere” feature that lets users split any Pix payment even at non-partner merchants. The platform is connected to more than 10,000 retailers—including AliExpress, Temu, Shein, Soma Group brands, and Vivara—and serves over 5 million consumers. Over the last 12 months the company processed about 10 million transactions, reaching an annualized total payment volume (TPV) of USD 570 million, four times the prior year, while revenue grew sixfold. Management projects annualized revenue of roughly USD 100 million by the second half of 2026 and reports a positive EBITDA starting in 2025. Pagaleve’s AI-driven risk engine maintains a 70 % approval rate and only 2 % delinquency, with a KS coefficient of 45 % for new users. Repeat customers generate 75 % of revenue, with 62 % of first-time buyers returning for a second purchase.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2023

Rice Robotics is a four-year-old Hong Kong company that builds autonomous indoor delivery robots and a line of disinfection robots. Its delivery robots carry up to 30 kg, offer internal storage of 39 x 27 x 34 cm, run for 12 hours and can recharge within one hour, navigating with SLAM. The robots have a starting market price of $9,000 and have been deployed since January 2021 delivering 7-Eleven products to SoftBank staff; Japan is now Rice’s biggest source of revenue. Rice counts clients in Japan including SoftBank, Toyota, Japan Post and Mitsui Group. The company moved production to a new 13,000-square-foot plant in Hong Kong, which increased annual production capacity from 500 to 2,000 robots. A portion of its recent funding has been deployed to scale manufacturing in Hong Kong and to push further into the Japanese market.

Led · 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.