UK-based online lending marketplace Funding Circle raised £82m ($100m) in funding yesterday from investors including e-commerce holding company Rocket Internet.
Accel led the round, which also featured fellow venture capital firms Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Union Square Ventures, investment firms Baillie Gifford, Sands Capital Ventures and DST Global, and Temasek, an investment entity owned by the Singaporean government.
Funding Circle operates a platform that enables investors to lend money to small businesses. It was responsible for more than $1.1bn in financing during 2016, approximately £400m of which was lent in Q4, the same quarter the company achieved profitability.
The investment comes less than a week after the company revealed it had secured £40m in debt financing from the UK government’s British Business Bank, which had previously supplied it with £60m in financing in 2013.
Although it has not revealed a valuation for the round, Funding Circle co-founder and CEO Samir Desai told TechCrunch it was slightly higher than in April 2015, when it raised $150m in series E funding at a valuation of more than $1bn.
The 2015 round was led by DST Global and backed by Baillie Gifford, Sands Capital Ventures, Temasek and an unnamed fund managed by BlackRock. Funding Circle has raised approximately $373m in equity funding since it was founded in 2010.
Samir Desai said in a statement: “Funding Circle is changing the financial landscape for small businesses and investors globally, ensuring a better deal for everyone and helping to create a more sustainable and fairer economy.
“Today’s news is the next step on our journey to create a category-defining company that helps thousands of small businesses access finance and create jobs. Over the next 12 months, lending through the Funding Circle platform will create a further 50,000 new jobs, supporting economic growth in the UK, US and continental Europe.”