Jeeves has secured $180 million in a Series C funding round. The startup had closed on a $57 million Series B round less than seven months ago.
Rapidly expanding fintech firm, Jeeves, has secured $180 million in a Series C round, valuing the company at $2.1 billion. Raising multiple rounds of funding in a short period of time for financial technology businesses has recently been more of the standard than the exception. Nonetheless, the rate of Jeeves’ growth and valuation increase is astonishing.
Jeeves, which bills itself as “an all-in-one corporate card and cost management platform for global startups,” was valued at $500 million when it raised funds in September.
This implies it has more than quadrupled in value in less than six months. It’s also worth noting that Jeeves only went public in March of 2021, and only emerged from stealth in June with $31 million in equity and $100 million in debt. Jeeves was a member of Y Combinator’s summer batch in the summer of 2020.
Its success demonstrates how competitive — and profitable — the corporate card and expenditure management industry has grown. For example, Jeeves claims that since its Series B announcement in September, its income has increased by 900 percent and its client count has more than doubled to over 3,000 enterprises.
It has also attained approximately $1.3 billion in annualised gross transaction volume (GTV), with a goal of reaching $4 billion by the end of the year.
Dileep Thazhmon, CEO and founder of Jeeves said, “When I produced the rough Series C deck in December, I saw we had more than doubled sales compared to the entire month of November,”
Then, in the first two months of 2022, we generated more income than in the entire year of 2021.”
Tencent led the latest round of funding, which also included GIC, Stanford University, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), CRV, Silicon Valley Bank, FT Partners, Clocktower Ventures, Urban Innovation Fund, Haven Ventures, Gaingels, Spike Ventures, the family offices of two FAANG founders, and Carlo Enrico, Mastercard’s president of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The company has raised more than $380 million in the last year.
Thazhmon said, “We ended up with five term sheets, which was a validation during a time when we’re seeing more due diligence than we had previously and a more difficult fundraising environment.”
In January and February, the market looked substantially different from what it did in December.”
So, what exactly does Jeeves do?
Jeeves offers underwriting, credit in local currency, and payment rails “for any business spend across nations and currencies.” It presently has customers in 24 countries across North America, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, who are a mix of high-growth startups, e-commerce enterprises, and SMEs such as Bitso, Kavak, and Belvo, among others.
Jeeves was formed in 2020 on the assumption that startups have previously had to rely on local and country-specific financial infrastructure.
A company with employees in Mexico and Colombia, for example, would need different vendors to cover its finance function in each nation – a corporate card in Mexico, one in Colombia, and another vendor for cross-border payments.
The firm says that by utilising its own banking-as-a-service architecture, any organisation may launch its finance department “in minutes” and gain access to 30 days of credit on a corporate card (with 4% cash back), non-card payment rails, and cross-border payments. Customers can also pay in several currencies, which reduces FX (foreign transaction) fees.
