Top Insights
Capital hasn’t stopped moving this week. From Riyadh to London to San Francisco, fintechs raised fresh firepower to scale payments, lending, wealth tools, and even stablecoin rails. Here’s a rundown of the biggest deals worth keeping an eye on.
The Big Five
HALA
$157M (Series B, Saudi Arabia)
Embedded finance platform for SMEs and freelancers. Co-led by TPG’s Rise Fund and Sanabil Investments (PIF arm), joined by QED, Raed Ventures, MEVP, and others. HALA serves 142,000+ businesses processing $8B annually; funds fuel regional expansion aligned with Saudi’s Vision 2030.
Speedchain
$111M (Equity + Debt, USA)
Fintech automation platform for payments and workflows. Growth package combines equity (from GTM Fund, Village Global, TTV Capital, K5 Global, Tandem, Emigrant Bank) with debt from Community Investment Management. Capital will drive expansion across enterprise clients.
Aven
$110M (Series E, USA)
Consumer credit and home-equity lender scaling its “machine banking” platform. Round led by Khosla Ventures, valuing Aven at $2.2B. Proceeds earmarked for distribution and product expansion.
Factris
€100M Facility (~$107M, Netherlands/EU)
Invoice-factoring fintech secured a warehouse facility from Dutch neobank Brand New Day Bank. Funds expand SME working-capital loans across Europe, leveraging Factris’s digital receivables platform.
Stablecore
$20M (Seed/Growth, USA)
Freshly launched fintech enabling banks and credit unions to issue stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Round led by Norwest, joined by BankTech Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Curql, and others. Funding supports recruitment and integration with U.S. regional/community banks.
Startups on the Radar
Eloquent AI – $7.4M (Seed, USA)
Automating customer service for financial institutions. Led by Foundation Capital, with EJF Ventures, Duke Capital Partners, Zeno Ventures, and Y Combinator — building on AI trends already reshaping compliance through explainable AI in credit and lending.
Chip – £6M (~$7.5M, UK)
Digital wealth platform raised at a £208M valuation. Round led by Channel 4 Ventures, continuing Chip’s mix of institutional and retail crowdfunding backers.
These moves show the split-screen in fintech right now: massive institutional bets on scaling platforms like HALA and Aven, alongside early-stage capital backing startups from AI to stablecoins. The rails are diversifying, but the race is the same – who captures where money moves next.
Disclaimer: This digest is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
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