Latest news with #JackZhang
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Airwallex Raises $300M As It Expands In U.S. And Latin America, Now Valued At $6.2B With Clients Like Shein And Xero
Payments startup Airwallex Wednesday that it secured a new $300 million funding round, pushing its valuation to $6.2 billion. Founded in 2015, Airwallex has grown into a global player by helping businesses send, receive, and manage international payments at scale, Reuters reports. With a network spanning more than 150 countries, the company now reports over $1.2 billion in total funding, with investors of the latest round including major names like DST Global, Square Peg, Lone Pine Capital, and Blackbird. Don't Miss: Hasbro, MGM, and Skechers trust this AI marketing firm — 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. While fintech startups exploded in valuation post-pandemic, many are now facing investor fatigue. According to Reuters, persistently high interest rates, recession concerns, and geopolitical volatility have forced many firms to delay fundraising or accept lower terms. Airwallex has bucked that trend since its 11% increase in valuation from the previous round in 2022 is a signal of both operational strength and investor confidence. The company now counts industry giants like Shein, Qantas, and Xero among its client base, Reuters says. CEO Jack Zhang told Reuters that more than 70% of the company's net revenue now comes from online payment processing and spend management, rather than just cross-border infrastructure. The diversification strategy appears to be paying off. Zhang emphasized in the company's announcement that Airwallex is no longer just a cross-border payments solution, but a broader financial operating system for modern businesses. Trending: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — 'The global financial system wasn't built for today's borderless economy,' Zhang said. 'Too many businesses are held back by legacy infrastructure that's slow, costly, and fragmented. At Airwallex, we're building a new foundation for the global economy – one that's fast, seamless, and built for scale. This investment marks a major milestone in our journey to redefine global banking, and to empower businesses everywhere to grow without limits.' Airwallex is also doubling down on global expansion. The company said it opened its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco last year and recently opened new offices in New York, Toronto, and Paris. According to Reuters, the startup is joining other payment providers competing with major players like JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and Citigroup (NYSE:C). In addition to its growing presence in North America, Airwallex is targeting Japan, South Korea, and Latin America as core areas for future growth. With a global headquarters now based in Singapore, the company is positioning itself as a truly borderless platform for modern business finance, Reuters said it developed a proprietary global infrastructure designed to modernize how businesses move money across borders. By building direct connections to local clearing systems and card networks, the company has created a faster, more efficient alternative to traditional banking rails. Most of the company's transactions are completed within hours, with a majority processed instantly. With tools that span global business accounts, FX, spend management, and embedded finance APIs, Airwallex is positioning itself as the operating system for modern businesses. With the new funding, Airwallex said in its funding announcement that it is now preparing for its next phase: deeper integration, bigger partnerships, and an even broader global footprint. Read Next: Invest where it hurts — and help millions heal:.Image: Shutterstock UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Airwallex Raises $300M As It Expands In U.S. And Latin America, Now Valued At $6.2B With Clients Like Shein And Xero originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The CEO of $6 billion payments company Airwallex says he made 3 mistakes in the early days of the company
Airwallex's CEO, Jack Zhang, detailed early mistakes in the startup's hiring and expansion strategy. Zhang said he regrets not outsourcing and that he expanded too fast and neglected company culture. Airwallex recently raised $300 million, valuing the fintech firm at $6.2 billion. The CEO of Tencent and Sequoia-backed payments startup Airwallex said that if he had to start over, there are three things he would do differently. Jack Zhang said his mistakes include not outsourcing to a good recruiter in the early days, expanding overseas too quickly, and not prioritizing company culture. The Airwallex cofounder and CEO spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast aired on Monday. "I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn," Zhang said of his first mistake. "Obviously, there's a lot of benefit of doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach and then give them access to my LinkedIn password." Zhang cofounded Airwallex with four friends in Melbourne in 2015. The Singapore-based fintech company provides cross-border payments and financial services through its banking network and protocols that allow different software components to communicate with each other. Last week, the company announced that it raised $300 million in a series F funding round at a valuation of $6.2 billion. Zhang said that his second mistake was that Airwallex overinvested in international expansion without having a product-market fit. He said the company got lucky, but doing this carried a lot of risk. The CEO said the last thing he would change would be investing in company culture early. "In the early first four, five years, we hired a lot of people with a lot of great experience — they're from a bank, they're from Citibank, they've built a Swift network before," he said. "They join, they're telling you, 'you guys know nothing, what you're going to do doesn't work.' None of those people worked." He said that experience matters less than other characteristics. "We should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on," Zhang said. "But we didn't, so we had to fire all of them," he added, speaking of his challenging early hires. Zhang is among tech CEOs who have looked back on their companies' early days and said they waited too long before delegating. Earlier this month, Luis von Ahn, the cofounder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, said that he micromanaged 50 employees in the early days of the company. He said he only learned to spread the responsibility once it became "impossible" to manage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said in a talk at Stanford University. "Two of my executive team are sitting here — head of people and head of finance. I am neither good at those things nor do I get energy from them, so they have all the freedom in the world," he said. Microsoft's former CEO, Bill Gates, is also outspoken about delegation and how he learned that he could not be involved with every project or team member as the company grew. "I had always been the taskmaster, the one who incessantly worried about losing our lead, and fearing that if we weren't careful, we'd be sunk," Gates wrote in his memoir. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The CEO of $6 billion payments company Airwallex says he made 3 mistakes in the early days of the company
Jack Zhang said his mistakes include not outsourcing to a good recruiter in the early days, expanding overseas too quickly, and not prioritizing company culture. The Airwallex cofounder and CEO spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast aired on Monday. "I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn," Zhang said of his first mistake. "Obviously, there's a lot of benefit of doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach and then give them access to my LinkedIn password." Zhang cofounded Airwallex with four friends in Melbourne in 2015. The Singapore-based fintech company provides cross-border payments and financial services through its banking network and protocols that allow different software components to communicate with each other. Last week, the company announced that it raised $300 million in a series F funding round at a valuation of $6.2 billion. Zhang said that his second mistake was that Airwallex overinvested in international expansion without having a product-market fit. He said the company got lucky, but doing this carried a lot of risk. The CEO said the last thing he would change would be investing in company culture early. "In the early first four, five years, we hired a lot of people with a lot of great experience — they're from a bank, they're from Citibank, they've built a Swift network before," he said. "They join, they're telling you, 'you guys know nothing, what you're going to do doesn't work.' None of those people worked." He said that experience matters less than other characteristics. "We should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on," Zhang said. "But we didn't, so we had to fire all of them," he added, speaking of his challenging early hires. Zhang is among tech CEOs who have looked back on their companies' early days and said they waited too long before delegating. Earlier this month, Luis von Ahn, the cofounder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, said that he micromanaged 50 employees in the early days of the company. He said he only learned to spread the responsibility once it became "impossible" to manage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said in a talk at Stanford University. "Two of my executive team are sitting here — head of people and head of finance. I am neither good at those things nor do I get energy from them, so they have all the freedom in the world," he said. Microsoft's former CEO, Bill Gates, is also outspoken about delegation and how he learned that he could not be involved with every project or team member as the company grew.
Business Insider
27-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The CEO of $6 billion payments company Airwallex says he made 3 mistakes in the early days of the company
The CEO of Tencent and Sequoia-backed payments startup Airwallex said that if he had to start over, there are three things he would do differently. Jack Zhang said his mistakes include not outsourcing to a good recruiter in the early days, expanding overseas too quickly, and not prioritizing company culture. The Airwallex cofounder and CEO spoke on an episode of the "20VC" podcast aired on Monday. "I hired the first 100 people in Airwallex by myself on LinkedIn," Zhang said of his first mistake. "Obviously, there's a lot of benefit of doing that, but I could have hired a good recruiter just to help me to do the outreach and then give them access to my LinkedIn password." Zhang cofounded Airwallex with four friends in Melbourne in 2015. The Singapore-based fintech company provides cross-border payments and financial services through its banking network and protocols that allow different software components to communicate with each other. Last week, the company announced that it raised $300 million in a series F funding round at a valuation of $6.2 billion. Zhang said that his second mistake was that Airwallex overinvested in international expansion without having a product-market fit. He said the company got lucky, but doing this carried a lot of risk. The CEO said the last thing he would change would be investing in company culture early. "In the early first four, five years, we hired a lot of people with a lot of great experience — they're from a bank, they're from Citibank, they've built a Swift network before," he said. "They join, they're telling you, 'you guys know nothing, what you're going to do doesn't work.' None of those people worked." He said that experience matters less than other characteristics. "We should just have hired those curious, determined, optimistic people from early on," Zhang said. "But we didn't, so we had to fire all of them," he added, speaking of his challenging early hires. Zhang is among tech CEOs who have looked back on their companies' early days and said they waited too long before delegating. Earlier this month, Luis von Ahn, the cofounder and CEO of language-learning app Duolingo, said that he micromanaged 50 employees in the early days of the company. He said he only learned to spread the responsibility once it became "impossible" to manage that many people. "At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions," von Ahn said in a talk at Stanford University. "Two of my executive team are sitting here — head of people and head of finance. I am neither good at those things nor do I get energy from them, so they have all the freedom in the world," he said. Microsoft's former CEO, Bill Gates, is also outspoken about delegation and how he learned that he could not be involved with every project or team member as the company grew. "I had always been the taskmaster, the one who incessantly worried about losing our lead, and fearing that if we weren't careful, we'd be sunk," Gates wrote in his memoir.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Airwallex Bucks The Fintech Winter: Inside The $6.2 Billion Bet On Cross-Border Payments
Jack Zhang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Airwallex Pty., at the Founders Forum Global ... More conference in Great Tew, UK, on Thursday, June 13, 2024. The conference connects founders with influential investors, CEOs, and government officials. Photographer: Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg When Australian-born, now Singapore-headquartered, Airwallex disclosed on 21 May that it had pulled in another US $300 million at a US $6.2 billion valuation, many observers, including myself, reacted with surprise - if not disbelief. Venture investment into fintech is trudging through its deepest freeze in seven years, down 72% year-on-year for 'banking tech' deals in the March quarter alone, according to fresh industry tallies. Yet here was a cross-border payments specialist posting an 11% valuation jump on the back of a round that was half secondary and half primary, led not by desperate existing investors but by a syndicate that still includes DST Global, Lone Pine and Square Peg. Airwallex is not the only money-movement start-up sidestepping the funding winter. In the past fortnight alone: Both sums are rounding errors next to Airwallex's war chest, but the optics are identical: cross-border payments, particularly B2B FX, remain fundable even as consumer-lending, wealthtech, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) valuations continue to compress. Investors have decided that helping companies shift money across borders is a fundamental plumbing business, not a cyclical sugar high. 1. Locked-in revenue pools McKinsey's most recent Global Payments Report put 2025 cross-border flows at US $200 trillion - a 15% jump in a single year. B2B trade still makes up roughly two-thirds of that. Even if the growth rate cools to a projected five percent CAGR through 2028, that still adds up to a tremendous amount of potential fee income across the system. Unlike retail BNPL, those flows are not optional; they are the grease that keeps global supply chains moving. 2. Diversified corridor exposure Airwallex's latest numbers show the firm's gross profit in the Americas and Europe growing at a 250 percent CAGR over the past four years, while Asia remains its anchor. A corridor-agnostic model hedges geopolitical risk far better than single-market neobanks. 3. Enterprise stickiness Companies that integrate a provider's APIs into their treasury or marketplace stack rarely rip them out. Once Airwallex sits under Shein, Qantas or Xero—as the company now boasts—the switching costs soar. Net revenue retention north of 120 percent is commonplace, cushioning any macro wobble. 4. Structural tailwinds Cross-border e-commerce, digital nomad payrolls and the still-unfinished job of real-time interlinkage (PayNow-DuitNow, PROMPT Pay, InstaPay et al.) are permanent growth levers. Even banks concede that 'up to 65 percent' of low-value international transfers have already migrated to non-traditional providers. Compare Airwallex's trajectory with that of two other fintech archetypes: Why the difference? Because cross-border players monetise both volume growth and FX spread, giving them an inbuilt hedge against interest-rate gyrations. When the Fed raises rates, Klarna's funding costs balloon; when the dollar spikes, Airwallex makes more money per transaction. Airwallex's US $6.2 billion price tag now represents roughly 5.5 times its forecast US $1 billion run-rate revenue for 2025. That multiple looks steep beside public-market comps. London-listed Wise trades at about 3 times forward revenue and a US $11 billion market cap as of 23 May. Yet private investors seem willing to pay an 'execution premium' for the faster-growing challenger, betting that it will eventually land above the peers once it monetises adjacent services such as multi-currency credit and corporate cards. The brutal reality for most late-stage fintechs is a flat or down round. According to venture advisory Pathlight, fewer than 10 percent of Series D+ fintech deals in Q1 2025 priced above their previous round. Airwallex sits in that privileged minority—one reason its raise captured headlines far beyond the payments clique. CEO Jack Zhang says the fresh cash will bankroll pushes into Japan, Korea, the UAE and Latin America, plus heavier investment in an embedded-finance suite that already offers treasury, expense management and credit. The more interesting subplot is the US $150 million in secondary share sales baked into the deal: early employees and angels are finally getting partial liquidity, a gentle nod to the fact the IPO window may still be 18-24 months away. For customers, that war chest translates into ever-thinner spreads. The dirty secret of cross-border FX is commoditisation: if you cannot beat Wise or Revolut on price, you had better differentiate on API depth or local payout options. With annual transaction value already above US $130 billion, Airwallex can amortise margin pressure across scale. Yes, says the recent flow of smaller cheques into seed-stage payment infrastructure outfits. OpenFX's seed-plus round and Navro's Series B tell us that VCs are still pushing money toward anyone claiming to shave basis points off global settlement. They are not underwriting the next consumer wallet; they are underwriting the next generation of 'picks and shovels' that power borderless trade. That aligns neatly with corporate procurement habits. When an apparel marketplace in São Paulo wants to pay a fabric mill in Guangzhou on Sunday night, it does not care about flashy branding; it cares that the money lands in hours, not days, and reconciles back to its ERP automatically. Cross-border infrastructure has become a utility - and utilities attract 'flight-to-quality' capital when the rest of the market turns risk-off. 1. Regulatory minefields. Every jurisdiction now flirts with hard data-localisation rules, tougher licensing for Payment Aggregators (India's PA regime is the poster child) and looming equivalence questions under Basel's prudential treatment of digital-asset exposures. A single compliance mis-step can turn a growth engine into a money pit. 2. The ascent of instant domestic rails. ASEAN's mesh of bilateral QR links promises dollar-free retail settlement. As those networks mature, spread-taking intermediaries could be squeezed out of low-ticket corridors entirely. B2B flows are safer, but the margin ceiling will keep ratcheting down. 3. IPO timing risk. Airwallex clearly wants a public listing - rumour has long swirled around a dual US-Hong Kong float - but the 2025 window is crowded. VC-owned peers such as Nium, Stripe and Rapyd eye the same runway; saturation could trigger valuation discipline that private investors have postponed. The broader lessons for founders and investors are stark: For regulators, the raise is another data point that competition in international payments is intensifying without formal regulatory bulldozing. The BIS's Project Nexus and ASEAN's multilateral Fast Payment System have yet to launch - and already the private sector is slashing fees and speed. Fintech may be in a funding freeze, but cross-border payment specialists like Airwallex are skating on a thicker sheet of ice. They own the pipes through which global commerce flows, and—at least for now—those pipes are indispensable. As capital reallocates toward ventures that promise boring reliability rather than headline-grabbing growth, the humble FX spread is turning into one of the safest bets in next-generation finance. If history is any guide, a 5–6× revenue multiple for a hyper-growth infrastructure play will not look extravagant once public investors regain their appetite. Until then, every Series C founder building treasury APIs or multicurrency wallets will pin Airwallex's funding deck to the virtual wall and tell investors: 'See? Payments plumbing pays.'
