ICYMI fintech funding round-up: Raenest, Affinity Africa, Era and more
At FinTech Futures, we know that it can be easy to let funding announcements slip you by in this fast-paced industry. That’s why we put together our weekly In Case You Missed It (ICYMI) funding round-up so you can get the latest funding news.
Model ML emerges from stealth with $12m round
US-based start-up Model ML has emerged from stealth with a $12 million funding round led by Y Combinator and LocalGlobe.
Founded in 2023 by brothers Chaz and Arnie Englander, Model ML offers an AI-driven solution which automates financial research and due diligence.
In an interview with Fortune, Chaz Englander explains the product is “effectively a tabular view on top of an agentic system”, adding that “popular use cases among early customers” include “creating earnings summaries, trend analysis, market mapping, querying structured info from huge document repositories, and more”.
While the company has not disclosed specific plans for the funds, the New York-headquartered firm aims to expand its current client base of over 40.
Nigeria-based fintech Raenest has closed an $11 million Series A funding round led by QED Investors.
Additional participants in the round included Seedstars, Norrsken22, P1 Ventures and Ventures Platform.
Founded in 2022, Raenest provides a multi-currency platform serving over 700,000 individuals and 300 African businesses, claiming to have processed over $1 billion in payments.
The cash injection has been earmarked to drive the firm’s expansion into the US and Egypt while strengthening its presence in its core markets of Nigeria and Kenya.
Affinity Africa bags $8m Seed funding round
Affinity Africa, a digital banking platform headquartered in Ghana, has raised $8 million in a Seed funding round led by Grazia Equity and BACKED VC.
The round was also contributed to by Attijariwafa Ventures, Impact Assets, Enza Capital, Launch Africa, Renew Capital, Finca International, and a group of unnamed angels.
Founded in 2022, Affinity Africa’s platform delivers a range of banking services including personal and SME accounts, savings, investments, loans, payments, transfers to banks and mobile money wallets.
Since its launch last October, the company claims to have onboarded over 50,000 customers, primarily focusing on individuals and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
With its financing, Affinity Africa says it intends to “expand its reach” in its home market of Ghana, ahead of a planned international expansion across Africa.
Era, an AI-powered personal finance management platform, has raised $6.2 million in Seed funding co-led by Protagonist, MaC Venture Capital, and Third Kind Venture Capital.
The round, which features contributions from Clocktower Ventures, K5 Ventures, and Northzone, builds on Era’s $3.1 million fundraise from November 2023, bringing its total funding to over $9 million.
Headquartered in New York, Era’s agentic AI-powered platform acts as a financial assistant providing personalised insights and “proactive” money management services, including money transfers and portfolio trading.
The company, which recently strengthened its leadership with strategic hires from Stripe and SoFi, reveals that in the “near future” it intends to launch new partnerships, expand its user base, and further develop its product offerings.
Swiss fintech ETFbook has bagged its first external funding round, landing a €4 million Series A led by French VC firm BlackFin Capital Partners.
Founded in 2020, ETFbook operates as a B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), providing a data and analytics platform to over 35 institutional clients.
The cash injection has been earmarked to bolster the company’s AI/ML-driven analytics and data processing capabilities as it prepares for its US market entry “later this year”.
Moreover, the funds will be used to fuel a hiring spree, with ETFbook focusing on expanding its teams across product development, data science, sales, and marketing.
Receipt raises €1.8m round led by DNB Ventures
Receipts, an Oslo-based start-up, has secured a €1.8 million funding round led by DNB Ventures, the ventures arm of Den Norske Bank.
Established in 2021, Receipts has developed a solution that automatically extracts digital receipts from computer systems so that “consumers can share these with banks, accounting systems and insurance companies, among others”, explains DNB Ventures in a translated statement.
Furthermore, the start-up’s API suite includes a “tap to identify” feature, aiming to enhance loyalty programmes by enabling users to identify themselves using their payment cards.
The round, which saw additional support from Antler, Obos, and Såkorn 1 Midt, will be utilised to drive Receipts’ launch in Norway.
“Our ambition is to establish Receipts as the preferred infrastructure for digital receipts and ‘tap to identify’ in Norway, and then expand internationally,” says Kent Olav Ferstad, CEO of Receipts.
Money Squirrel, a UK-based fintech focused on enhancing cashflow management for businesses, has bagged £185,000 in a pre-Seed funding round led by the newly-established family office Lazaroo-Hood Group.
The company, which has not revealed specific plans for the funds, rolled out its open banking-powered mobile app last month. The app links to business current accounts and redirects saving allocations, such as taxes, to interest-earning savings accounts.
Founder and CEO, Andreea Daly, says she created Money Squirrel to solve a problem she faced, “the hours it took to move the VAT portion from every invoice into a separate, savings account”.
