Latest news with #YuriMilner
Business Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Times
Digital banking startup Chime targets US$11.2 billion valuation in US IPO
[BENGALURU] Digital banking startup Chime Financial said on Monday (Jun 2) it was targeting a valuation of up to US$11.2 billion on a fully diluted basis in its long-awaited New York initial public offering, underscoring the growing momentum in the new listings market. San Francisco, California-based Chime and some of its existing shareholders are seeking to raise up to US$832 million by offering 32 million shares priced between US$24 and US$26 apiece. Chime is offering 25.9 million shares in the offering, while certain shareholders, including venture capital firm Cathay Innovation, are putting up 6.1 million shares. The US IPO market has sprung back to its feet after a disappointing April as equities rebounded amid easing volatility, paving the way for companies to go public after tariff-driven chaos shut the window for weeks. Recent listings, including retail trading platform eToro, have been well-received by investors. Analysts say the stage is set for a broader IPO pickup, but stability needs to last longer before the window fully reopens. 'Momentum is building after the tariff-related volatility. Right now, investors want to see fundamentally strong companies with attractive valuations,' said Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Chime, founded in 2012, offers banking products such as checking and high-yield savings accounts through its app. The company mainly generates revenue when its members spend using Chime-branded debit and credit cards. Chime raised US$750 million in a 2021 funding round at a US$25 billion valuation. Its major backers include Yuri Milner's DST Global, private equity firm General Atlantic and investment firm ICONIQ. Fintech revival? Financial technology listings have slowed down since the pandemic-era boom as interest rates rose and inflation surged. Swedish fintech giant Klarna paused its US IPO plans earlier this year as tariffs rattled global markets. A successful IPO for Chime could pave the way for other fintech companies that have recently considered tapping public markets. Chime's IPO valuation target represents prudence in giving buyers a decent discount to encourage participation, said Samuel Kerr, head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket. 'As the largest deal to test the market since 'Liberation Day,' Chime will be a fascinating case study.' Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are the lead underwriters for the IPO offering. Chime will list on the Nasdaq under the symbol 'CHYM'. Chime plans to use a portion of its IPO proceeds to settle tax obligations related to employee-restricted stock units. REUTERS
Forbes
22-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Singapore-Based Fintech Unicorn Airwallex Raises $300 Million
Jack Zhang, cofounder and CEO of Airwallex. Headquartered in Singapore, global payments platform Airwallex announced Wednesday it raised a $300 million Series F funding round led by VC firm Square Peg, valuing the decade-old fintech company at $6.2 billion. The round, which brought Airwallex's total funds raised to over $1.2 billion, included participation from billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global, billionaire Stephen Mandel, Jr.'s Lone Pine Capital, Australian VC firms Blackbird and Airtree, and corporate VC firms Salesforce Ventures and Visa Ventures. 'We are excited to be leading Airwallex's most recent funding round,' said Paul Bassat, cofounder and partner at Square Peg, in a statement. 'From its roots in Melbourne, Airwallex is evolving into a generational global company. Its product offering meets critical needs for a large and growing cohort of global-first, digital-first companies that, in many cases, have complex financial services needs.' Half of the funding, or $150 million, took the form of secondary share transfers. Across ten or so previous funding rounds, with the most recent being an extended Series E in 2022, Airwallex's backers have spanned 1835i Ventures, a spinoff of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ Bank); billionaire Neil Shen's HongShan, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China; billionaire Pony Ma's tech giant Tencent; billionaire Zhang Lei's Hillhouse Capital; billionaire Solina Chau's Horizons Ventures, tied to Hong Kong's wealthiest person, billionaire Li Ka-shing; and pan-Asian VC firm Gobi Partners. The fresh Series F capital will go towards expanding Airwallex's global infrastructure into new markets and 'refining and scaling' its software for businesses, according to the company. With offices across the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, Airwallex recently entered Latin America's two largest economies, securing a license to operate in Brazil and finalizing its purchase of Mexican payments-service provider MexPago. Airwallex's team. From left: Xijing Dai, cofounder and CTO; Jack Zhang, cofounder and CEO; Lucy Liu, cofounder and president; Max Li, cofounder and head of design. 'The global financial system wasn't built for today's borderless economy,' Jack Zhang, cofounder and CEO at Airwallex, added in a statement. '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.' Founded in 2015, Airwallex facilitates cross-border payments across 60 currencies and over 150 countries. Through its international finance platform, the company's products include multi-currency accounts, borderless cards, expense management and payment plugins, serving more than 150,000 businesses worldwide. To date, its customers have included Australian airline Qantas, HR software company Rippling, fashion retailer Shein, Chinese online shopping giant and Tencent Music Entertainment. As of this March, Airwallex reported over $720 million in annualized revenue, a year-over-year increase of 90%, and over $130 billion in global annualized payments. On the back of its growth, the company is eyeing an IPO in the next year, according to local media, although it has not confirmed the targeted size or location of its listing. Beyond payments, Airwallex is also actively diversifying its business into banking, asset management and other financial services. Last October, the company received a license to provide asset management services in Hong Kong. Similarly, last July, it received a financial services license from Australian regulators to offer businesses access to retail investment products, adding to its existing license in the country. That Airwallex has emerged as a global leader is no small feat. In the landscape for cross-border payments, 'competition to secure a stake within this evolving market is fierce,' consulting firm EY wrote in a 2024 report, with the industry projected to reach $290 trillion by 2030. Key trends shaping transformations in this space include the demand for seamless, real-time transactions and potential integrations with digital currencies, the firm added. Across its suite of services, Airwallex may continue to face off against behemoths such as payments processor Stripe, which hit a total payment volume of $1.4 trillion this February, and neobank Revolut, which reported a net profit of $1 billion in 2024, its fourth straight year of profitability. Airwallex's latest fundraise – one of Australia's largest for a private company in the past five years – has defied a recent slump in VC activity across the Asia-Pacific. Deal value in the region fell around 32% to $12.9 billion in the first quarter of the year, down from $18.9 billion the quarter prior, according to an April report by consulting firm KPMG. Still, investment has risen globally, reaching $126.3 billion in the first quarter, charged by a surge of investments in AI.
TechCrunch
13-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
$25B-valued Chime files for an IPO, reveals $33M deal with Dallas Mavericks
At long last, digital consumer bank Chime has moved forward with its IPO by filing its S-1 paperwork Tuesday. Chime had reportedly filed confidential S-1 paperwork back in December. S-1 filings typically reveal all kinds of information, covering financial, legal, and other risk factors. But Chime's S-1 documents still have a lot of blank spaces. We don't know how many shares it hopes to sell or at what price. Chime could be aiming to raise $1 billion, IPO specialist Renaissance Capital believes. We also don't know how many shares insiders plan to sell as part of the IPO. This includes its major backers, a list that includes billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global, Michael Stark's Crosslink Capital, billionaire Len Blavatnik's Access Industries as well as VC firms General Atlantic, Menlo Venture (led by board member Shawn Carolan), the Sino French Innovation Fund, and Iconiq Strategic Partners, according to the paperwork. Chime raised $2.65 billion total as a private company, including its last raise in 2021 that valued it at $25 billion, PitchBook estimates. As a result, there are many more VCs on its cap table. They, too, could be in for big paydays. For instance, Kirsten Green's Forerunner Ventures and Hunter Walk's Homebrew both claim Chime as a portfolio company. Chime offered one detail that suggests the company believes it will be a huge IPO. Chime enlisted an army of big name investment bankers, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan. The financials show why investors may grow excited. The company finished 2024 with $1.67 billion in revenue and $25 million in losses, compared to nearly $1.3 billion in revenue and $203 million of losses in 2023. Its 2025 first quarter revenue was already $519 million. So, by Silicon Valley math, that puts it on track for $2 billion this year and near profitability. Chime offers consumer checking, savings, debit, and credit cards and claims 8.6 million active users. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW One interesting reveal in the paperwork. Its board member Cynthia Marshall served as the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks from 2018 to December 2024. Chime became a Mavericks sponsor during that time. It paid around $33 million over three years (2022-2024), which gained it the Chime logo on the team's jersey, among other marketing benefits. Without that deal, it might have already been profitable.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Tiny spacecraft could travel across interstellar space with this 'trampoline' lightsail
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have taken a major step toward developing lightsails that could one day carry tiny spacecraft to distant star systems. The new findings detail a method to measure the force of laser light on what are known as "ultrathin membranes." This is research that could help advance the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative's vision of laser-driven space travel. Launched in 2016 by the late Stephen Hawking and tech investor Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Starshot aims to send miniature probes to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth. The plan relies on high-powered lasers on Earth pushing delicate sail-driven probes in the cosmos like the wind does for sailboats here on the planet, allowing the craft to achieve record-breaking speeds without the need for a chemical propellant. Lightsails are a more generic form of solar sail, in that they use radiation pressure from a light source to generate propulsion. Radiation pressure is the transfer of momentum from radiation striking a surface like the wind does to canvas sails here on Earth. Photons have no mass, but they still transfer some of their momentum when they hit an object, pushing it ever so slightly. A single photon doesn't make much of a difference, but trillions and trillions of photons all hitting a surface add up, especially in the vacuum of space. Radiation in the form of sunlight is therefore enough to push interplanetary spacecraft thousands of miles off course, however, so this effect must be accounted for when sending probes to Mars or other planets. But a higher-energy version of this phenomenon could use a ground- or space-based laser beam to push a lightsail on a spacecraft in a more directed way. With the beam providing a source of constant pressure on the sail, the cumulative effect of this radiation pressure adds up to speeds significantly faster and more reliable than you could get from complicated rockets using chemical propulsion. "The lightsail will travel faster than any previous spacecraft, with potential to eventually open interstellar distances to direct spacecraft exploration," Caltech's Harry Atwater, the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, said in a Caltech statement. Atwater's team developed a test platform to measure how lasers exert force on a microscopic "trampoline" of silicon nitride, just 50 nanometers thick. The miniature sail, a square sheet 40 microns on each side, is tethered at the corners by silicon nitride springs and vibrates when struck by a laser. By detecting those tiny movements, researchers can calculate the force of the laser beam and its power. "There are numerous challenges involved in developing a membrane that could ultimately be used as lightsail. It needs to withstand heat, hold its shape under pressure, and ride stably along the axis of a laser beam," Atwater said. "But before we can begin building such a sail, we need to understand how the materials respond to radiation pressure from lasers. We wanted to know if we could determine the force being exerted on a membrane just by measuring its movements. It turns out we can." The study's lead authors, postdoctoral scholar Lior Michaeli and graduate student Ramon Gao, built a specialized setup called a common-path interferometer. This enables precise measurement of the membrane's motion by canceling out background noise such as small vibrations in the lab from equipment or even people talking. "We not only avoided the unwanted heating effects but also used what we learned about the device's behavior to create a new way to measure light's force," Michaeli said. Gao added that the platform can measure side-to-side motion and rotations, paving the way for future lightsail designs that can self-correct if they stray from the laser beam. Related stories: — LightSail 2 celebrates 3rd space birthday as end of mission approaches — A solar sail in space: See the awesome views from LightSail 2 — LightSail 2 beams 1st photos home from orbit! Ultimately, the team hopes to integrate advanced nanomaterials and metamaterials to stabilize lightsails during their journey. "This is an important stepping stone toward observing optical forces and torques designed to let a freely accelerating lightsail ride the laser beam," Gao said. There are several light sail projects in the works, and NASA deployed a solar sail last year, though it has encountered some mechanical issues, highlighting the importance of the Caltech team's research in further refining the design of these sails. The results were published on Jan. 30 in the journal Nature Photonics,
