Berlin-based Upvest, which provides investment APIs to fintechs, has raised a €100m Series C equity funding round two months after receiving the nod from regulators to launch in the UK.
The funding round was led by fintech VC Hedosophia and featured participation from Sapphire Ventures. Upvest has raised more than $91.8m in funding from investors including HV Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Earlybird, Motive Ventures, Notion Capital and BlackRock — all of which took part in its Series C.
CEO Martin Kassing told Sifted that the funding round “2x’d” its previous valuation. The fintech last raised funding in October 2023 when it secured a valuation of $210m according to Dealroom.
What does Upvest do?
Upvest creates application programming interfaces (APIs) — a tools to enable different softwares to interact — that allow fintechs, neobanks and traditional financial institutions to easily integrate investment products. These range from portfolio management and fractional stock investment to automated saving plans and roundups of purchases.
Since its founding in 2017, Upvest has worked with fintechs including neobanks such as Revolut, N26 and Bunq as well as savings apps like Raisin and Plum.
Upvest makes money by taking a cut from the revenue models of each fintech it works with. Trading-focused fintechs like Revolut charge commission for every trade, from which Upvest also takes a fee. Other fintechs like roboadvisor Raisin levy an annual fee for their services, from which Upvest will take a share.
Expansion and the road to profitability
Kassing argues that Europe’s highly fragmented retail investment market — where each country has different tax laws and local investment products — means that fintechs expanding across the continent are more likely to choose to partner with a third party rather than building solutions in-house.
“One of the reasons why these high growing fintechs [partner with us] is because they have one solution for all of these markets that can scale and has a great user experience at a favourable cost,” he says.
In October, Upvest, which previously only operated across the EU, also obtained a licence from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to offer its services in the UK. But Kassing says that it doesn’t plan to expand further afield for now — or try to make it big in the USA as many other fintechs have attempted.
“I think the opportunity in Europe is so massive that we are very happy to be here and be laser-focused on Europe,” he says.
Kassing also says that this year the company has focused on growth — and 2025 is likely to be the same. Currently at 180 people, he expects that in the next two years headcount will reach around 360 as it makes use of the injection of capital to grow its numbers.
That means that, while Upvest said last that it’s on the road to profitability, Kassing thinks this is likely to instead happen the year after next (he declined to share revenue figures for 2023).
“I would say that profitability is something we’ll see in 2026,” he says. “And I say that with higher certainty than when I spoke last year.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/upvest-funding-news/
