While the fintech industry is preparing for a hard landing after the booming years, Berlin-based Mondu (www.mondu.ai) secured $43 million. This is the second-largest fintech funding this year right behind the €75 million credit card startup Moss received in January. As Mondu announces, Peter Thiel‘s Valar Ventures is leading the round as a new investor, as he did at Moss.
The existing investors, Cherry Ventures, Fintech Collective, and tech entrepreneurs and senior executives from Klarna, Zalando, and SumUp, also participated, TechCrunch reported. Mondu has raised $57 million since its inception in August 2021. The financing round comes at a critical time – for the “Buy now, pay later” sector and the fintech scene as a whole: At the Swedish giant Klarna, reports of a possible devaluation by investors (“down-round”) have only caused a stir in recent days; then the company also announced that it would part with ten percent of its approximately 7,000 employees worldwide.
The Berlin fintechs Kontist and Nuri had also announced staff reductions last week. The fact that Mondu can conclude considerable funding in this environment and also win a new investor for it is a positive sign for the market. Apparently, investors do not yet have any fundamental doubts about the potential of the BNPL business models – whereby the German startups (Mondu as well as competitor Billie) are also significantly younger than Klarna and in their size do not come close to the Swedes.
In addition, Mondu, founded by Philipp Povel, Malte Huffmann, and Gil Danziger, specializes – unlike Klarna – in trading with business customers. With the fresh capital (which, according to the list of individual investors, apparently also comes from Klarna executives), the company wants to promote internationalization in Europe. First of all, the market entry in Austria is planned.