Fintech startup Ramp has raised $300 million in a funding round co-led by existing backer Thrive Capital and new investor Sands Capital at a post-money valuation of $5.8 billion.
The Information reported last week that spend management company Ramp was raising “several hundred million dollars” at a $5.5 billion valuation. Ramp last raised in March 2022 — raising $200 million in equity funding at an $8.1 billion valuation. In total, the company has secured $970 million in equity financing and $700 million in committed debt funding since its 2019 inception.
Other investors participating in the latest financing include General Catalyst, Founders Fund and other existing backers. Ken Chenault, chairman and managing director of General Catalyst and former chairman and CEO of American Express, was said to be involved in the investment decision.
The company is using its new capital to accelerate product development, expand into adjacent categories and “hire significantly” in the second half of this year.
Join the club
Ramp is not the only fintech startup to see a valuation drop in the past 18 months. Many of the larger private companies in the space have seen steep declines in valuation, including Stripe and Klarna, among others. And if secondary activity is any indication, Ramp’s current valuation is not far off from projections made by Notice.co, a company that has built a pricing tool for the private markets. Notice founder Tyson Hendricksen told TechCrunch in July that based on secondary share trading, Ramp was estimated to be valued at $4.8 billion.
In March, co-founder and CEO Eric Glyman told TechCrunch that the company saw its revenue grow by 4x last year — led by its fastest-growing segment of bill pay — but was not yet profitable. The company had crossed $100 million in annualized revenue before its third birthday in March of 2022 and says now it has passed $300 million in annualized revenue.
Notably, the executive at that time also claimed that the startup still had “the vast majority of [equity] funds” it has “ever received” still on its balance sheet.
Either way, raising $300 million in today’s current environment is no easy feat. Global funding in the fintech space plunged by nearly half to $7.8 billion in the second quarter, its lowest level since 2017, according to CB Insights. Also, during the three-month period, funding from $100M+ mega-rounds totaled just $2 billion — a six-year low.
Expanding in more ways than one
Ramp has been vocal about its desire to grow — in terms of both products and customers. In June, TechCrunch exclusively reported that Ramp had acquired Cohere.io, a startup that built an AI-powered customer support tool. Earlier this month, Ramp announced that it was entering the procurement space as it focused more on “complex” enterprises, and that it had landed a new customer in Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify.
Over time, Ramp has continued to add on to its offerings — having started out as a corporate card startup company and gradually over time adding features such as bill pay, vendor management and travel expense management, among others.
And while the startup started out focused on small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it now works with “businesses of all sizes” — from startups to multibillion-dollar enterprises to potato farmers. As of early August, more than 15,000 businesses used Ramp, compared to 5,000 in March of 2022, the company said.
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