BlackFin Tech Weekly — December 14th
By: Romain Grimal
Tags: Fundraising, Fintech, Bftw, Startup, Venture Capital

Airbnb’s long-awaited IPO finally took place last week… and the company surprised everybody with a crazy valuation! Indeed, Airbnb opened at $146 on its first day trading, up from its $68 IPO price: even its CEO Brian Chesky couldn’t hide his shock. This also led Affirm, Inc. & Roblox to postpone their IPO until next year citing Airbnb’s price surge as a sign of mispricing risk. And who would want to leave money on the table, right?

And, closer to home, EU fintech deals came in strong too last week totalling €326m raised across 15 deals, including one of our own!

We are indeed proud to co-lead Modularbank’s €4m Series A alongside Karma Ventures and Plug and Play as well as star business angel Ott Kaukver (ex CTO of Twilio). Created in 2018 in Tallinn, Estonia, Modularbank has developed a cloud-based banking platform enabling traditional banks, fintechs but also non-financial institutions to deliver suitable financial services to their customers. If you want to know more about our investment thesis, feel free to read our article right here!

After this quick bout of self-promotion, let’s go back to European deals! Geography-wise, the UK leads the week once again with 5 deals, followed by Germany with 4 deals, Spain with 2 deals, and France, Sweden, Estonia and the Netherlands with 1 deal each.

Sub-sector wise, there were 7 deals in Banktech, 5 in Insurtech, 1 in Wealth Management, 1 in Payments and 1 in another Fintech sector related to blockchain.

Let’s dive in:

Made with ❤ by BlackFin Tech

Tink raises another €85m round:

This round was co-led by new investor Eurazeo Growth and Dawn Capital, with PayPal Ventures, HMI Capital, Heartcore Capital, ABN AMRO Ventures, Poste Italiane, and Opera Tech Ventures, also participating.

The post-money valuation was €680m.

Created in 2012, the Swedish open banking platform has raised a total amount of $308.5m.

The company already links up 3400 banks, covering some 250 million people, with partners including PayPal or BNP Paribas. Moreover, 8000 developers are using its APIs.

The new funds will be used to expand furthermore its networks of banks and payment services in Europe.

Luko raises a €50m Series B:

This round was led by EQT Ventures, alongside existing investors Accel; Founders Fund and Speedinvest also participating.

Created in 2016, Luko is a French insurtech selling home insurance products. Its customer base jumped from 15 000 last year to 100 000 today.

It currently operates as a broker, which means it collects premiums for an insurer, while getting a cut, typically somewhere between 20 and 30%. If the insurer makes a profit at the end of year, a positive technical result, Luko gets a share of this, which, as a B Corp, it gives to an NGO of its choosing. This highlights the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility to the company and its management.

Today, the company employs 85 people and plans to expand beyond France at the same time Lemonade set foot in this market.

Congrats also to Gohenry, Cleo, Outfund, Hellogetsafe, Finn.auto, Simplesurance, Battleface, Upvest, Asistensi, Payaut, Net Purpose and Bit2me!