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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Fintech startup Nium told CNBC on Wednesday that it has raised $50 million in new money from investors, and is targeting an initial public offering in the next 18 months.
The fundraising round was led by an undisclosed Southeast Asian sovereign wealth fund, and backed by venture capital firms BOND, NewView Capital, and Tribe Capital.
It puts Nium's valuation at $1.4 billion. This represents a 30% discount from its previous valuation of $2 billion, which the company achieved in 2022 when it last raised outside venture capital.
Prajit Nanu, CEO and founder of Nium, said the company will use the fresh capital to double down on mergers and acquisitions, and target other growth-stage payment companies.
Nano said the decline his company saw was a result of a broader decline in public market valuations for fintech companies.
Fintech companies have seen their stock prices decline in recent years as a result of macroeconomic pressures, including rising inflation and rising interest rates.
“To be realistic, when we raised money in early 2022, the public markets were killing it,” Nano said. “The public markets have not been kind to fintech.”
Subscription in 18 months
Nano said that despite the low valuation, he remains optimistic about Nium's growth story and is confident that the company will go public in the next 18 months, targeting a flotation in the third or fourth quarter of 2025.
He added that valuation is not a concern for him and that it will not matter what the value of the company is pricing its shares because the markets are inherently volatile.
“Whether you go public at $1 billion or $5 billion, it doesn't matter. Because the valuation only happens when you get bought, or when you go through an IPO,” he said.
He pointed to the example of Stripe, which raised its valuation by $95 billion in the heady days of 2021 before cutting its valuation to $50 billion and then boosting its valuation to $65 billion in secondary stock transactions.
Not interested in cryptocurrencies
Nano said he is not interested in acquiring companies in the cryptocurrency space because he does not yet see demand from merchants for cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.
“It's on the very early side of the infrastructure,” Nano said. “NEOM is ultimately a layer above a lot of the banks in the world.”
“Banks have moved from hot cryptocurrencies to non-cryptocurrencies,” he added. “It's not a one-size-fits-all shoe.”
This is despite a significant rise in the prices of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which rose on the back of renewed investor interest following the approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US.
Bitcoin has seen its price rise by almost 150% in the past 12 months.
