Fintech
Fintech firm Nium cuts valuation by 30% in new funding round, aims for IPO in 2025 – NBC Chicago
- Financial technology startup Nium told CNBC on Wednesday that it has raised $50 million in a fundraising round led by an undisclosed Southeast Asian sovereign wealth fund.
- The round, backed by venture capital firms BOND, NewView Capital and Tribe Capital, values the company at $1.4 billion, a 30% discount to its previous valuation.
- Despite the lower valuation, Nium is confident it can go public in the next 18 months and is targeting the third or fourth quarter of 2025 for its stock market debut.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Financial technology startup Nium told CNBC on Wednesday that it has raised $50 million in new funding 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.
Nium’s valuation stands at $1.4 billion. This marks a 30% discount from its previous valuation of $2 billion, which the company achieved in 2022, when it last raised external venture capital.
Prajit Nanu, CEO and founder of Nium, said the company will use the new capital to double down on mergers and acquisitions, targeting other growth-stage payments companies.
Nanu said his company’s decline was the result of a broader depression in public market valuations of fintech companies.
Fintech companies have seen their share prices plummet in recent years due to macroeconomic pressures, including high inflation and rising interest rates.
“If we’re realistic, when we raised in early 2022, the public markets were killing it,” Nanu said. “Public markets have not been kind to fintech.”
IPO in 18 months
Nanu said that despite the lower valuation, he is still optimistic about Nium’s growth story and is confident the company will go public in the next 18 months, with the aim of going public 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 value the company places on its shares as markets are volatile by nature.
“Whether you go public at $1 billion, or at $5 billion, it doesn’t matter. Because the valuation only happens when you get bought out or when you go through an IPO,” he said.
He cited the example of Stripe, which increased its valuation by $95 billion in the heady days of 2021 before reducing its value to $50 billion and then increasing its valuation to $65 billion in secondary equity transactions .
Not interested in cryptocurrencies
Nanu said he is not interested in acquiring companies in the cryptocurrency space because he does not do so yet see merchants’ demand for cryptocurrencies as a payment method.
“This is an early stage of infrastructure,” Nanu said. “Nium is ultimately a layer above many banks in the world.”
“Banks have gone from “cryptocurrency” to “non-cryptocurrency” to “cryptocurrency,” he added. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all shoe.”
This is despite a huge surge in prices of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, which have recovered thanks to renewed investor interest following the approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US
Bitcoin has seen its price rise by around 150% in the last 12 months.