Image credits: ArK Kapital
Stockholm-based Ark Kapital, a finance company, announced Monday that it has doubled its equity funding from €15M to €30M in an acceleration round.
The announcement comes six months after closing the Seed round at €165M in March and another €145M debt facility from Pollen Street Capital in April.
The round was led by banking icon Annika Falkengren with the participation of all seed investors, including LocalGlobe, Creandum, and angels like Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, Zettle founder Jacob de Geer, EQT Ventures founding partner Hjalmar Winbladh, and founder of Embark Studios Patrick Söderlund.
“I’ve worked in banking my whole life, and the lack of tech lending has never been due to lack of will. The problem has been forecasting startup risk and financial strength, something you could argue the whole capital market is bad at. ArK has come leaps and bounds in this regard, and their success will change debt financing and tech funding as a whole. I see this is an investment into the next chapter in finance and funding, “says Annika Falkengren
Ark Kapital also welcomed a new angel investor – Timo Soininen of Zynga-acquired company Small Giant Games. The latest acceleration round brings up the total capital pool for founders to lend to €300M.
CPTO and co-founder Henrik Landgren says, “We are gunning to become the leading predictive platform for tech companies, and this money will be put towards getting the best machine learning talent from Google, Spotify, and the rest. What all of these people are doing at a single firm, we invite them to do for every single tech firm in the world.”
Ark Kapital: What you need to know
Ark Kapital was founded in 2021 and launched in November by six-time entrepreneur Oliver Hildebrandt (CEO), veteran banker Axel Bruzelius (COO), and Spotify’s ex-VP of Analytics and former EQT Ventures partner Henrik Landgren (CPTO).
The Swedish company is a data-driven precision finance company that enables technology companies to grow faster through long-term loans. Ark Kapital has developed a proprietary AI platform – the ArK Intelligence Machine (AIM).
The AIM connects to the raw business data of a company along with relevant external market data, unlocking growth and strategic foresight.
The insights include when customers become profitable, when they require new capital injection, and how quickly they can reasonably repay a loan. Based on that intelligence, ArK customises loans and other financial tools that fuel growth for founders.
The company’s large growth loan spans between €1M to €10M, lasting up to seven years, with repayments not starting for two-to-three years.
Ark Kapital says the second loan product in the portfolio allows founders instant access to the money they’ve earned through various marketplaces or app stores, allowing reinvestment into growth peaks.
Zettle founder and angel investor Jacob de Geer says, “Founders who have gone through an extreme growth journey know the importance of protecting equity. With large ownership comes to control, and with control, you get to keep the joy of building. I’m glad to be part of delivering the new era of funding to the next generation of founders.”
EQT Ventures founding partner and chairman of the ArK board, Hjalmar Winbladh, says, “To raise an oversubscribed round in just a few days from some of the most reputable Investors is a strong testament to the whole ArK team, its ability to execute, and the market demand for its ground-breaking lending product to Scale-ups.”
Catch our interview with Paul Down, Head of Sales at Intigriti.
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