Image credits: Spendesk
Spendesk, a Paris-based spend management platform, announced on Tuesday that it has raised another €100M as an extension to its Series C round in July 2021, where it raised €100M.
With the latest funding round, the French company has reached unicorn status at a valuation of $1.14B (approx €1B).
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Spendesk’s CEO and co-founder Rodolphe Ardant says, “We’re incredibly proud to be among the highest-valued startups in France, and to contribute to the thriving European tech ecosystem, along with our friends and customers at Doctolib, Personio, SumUp, and many more.”
The investors
The investment comes from the American VC fund Tiger Global with participation from existing investors General Atlantic, Eight Roads Ventures, Index Ventures, and eFounders.
Spendesk is the fifth French company to become a unicorn so far this year. Other four startups that have crossed the €1B valuation mark include PayFit, Ankorstore, Qonto, and Exotec.
Fund utilisation
Spendesk says it intends to use the funds to accelerate product development and hire 300 employees in 2022.
“Bringing in the best and brightest people is my top priority right now,” says Ardant.
“We’ll need to build and bolster our talent bench in all departments to help us achieve our ambitious goals for next year. I want to continue building on the exceptional culture that Spendesk is known for” he adds.
Spendesk: What you need to know
Founded in 2016, Spendesk provides a 7-in-1 spend management solution to help small businesses manage the process of spending and managing money at work.
The platform includes corporate cards, invoice payments, expense reimbursements, budgets, approval, reporting, compliance, and pre-accounting in one simple and scalable solution.
The company witnessed massive growth during the pandemic.
“In the past year alone we’ve been voted the best fintech to work for in Europe, hired 100 new Spendeskers, helped our customers manage more than €3BN in spend through our platform, and hosted over 2,000 finance leaders at our inaugural CFO Connect Summit,” Ardant adds.
Right now, the company has around 3500 customers, including Algolia, Soundcloud, Curve, Doctolib, Gousto, Raisin, Sezane, and Wefox.
Recently, Uber alumni Erin Reiger Zas joined the leadership team as Chief People Officer.
“I’m thrilled to have joined a company that puts the success of their employees at the centre of the company mission. Ownership and trust are deeply rooted in our culture. We can give Spendeskers the flexibility they need to thrive because we know everyone takes ownership for our collective success,” says Reiger Zas.
Tiger Global
Based out of New York, Tiger Global is an investment firm focused on public and private companies in the global Internet, software, consumer, and financial technology industries.
Since 2003, Tiger’s private equity business has invested in hundreds of companies across 30 countries, including investments ranging from Series A to pre-IPO.
John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global, says, “We are impressed with Spendesk’s ability to meet rapidly evolving customer needs in a very dynamic environment. This agility and drive to innovate is why we are super excited to be part of the Spendesk journey in 2022 and beyond.”
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