Berkshire Hathaway led a second tranche of a series G round, raised by Nubank, a Tencent-backed virtual bank based in Brazil, at a $30bn valuation.
Nubank, a Brazil-based digital bank operator, raised $750m in a series G extension round, which was led by Berkshire Hathaway, the insurance company and conglomerate led by famous investor Warren Buffett. With this extension, the series G round amounted to a total of $1.15bn and it reportedly valued the company at $30bn post-money. Nubank also counts internet company Tencent among its backers. The latter had returned for the first close of this series G round, sized at $400m and completed in January this year. This latest funding will be used to further increase Nubank’s presence internationally, release new offerings and hire additional employees.
Founded in 2013, Nubank provides online bank accounts that come with a no-fee credit card and which are accessible through a mobile app. The company initially catered to customers in its home country and has since expanded into other Latin American countries including Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. It offers current and savings accounts for consumers, entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises, a loyalty reward programme and personal loan products.
The company is part of the larger banking and personal finance space – an area within fintech, which has seen considerable attention from corporate venture investors in recent years, as illustrated by the GCV Analytics historical bar chart below. The number of corporate-backed deals in these businesses reached a maximum of 96 in 2017 and has fluctuated since, dropping down to 67 in 2020, largely due to the pandemic shock and despite the fact that digital banking businesses were given a boost by it. Over the first five months of this year, we have already tracked 41 deals in this space, with a total estimated capital of $2.98bn in those rounds.
