Klarnageddon begins? Klarna to lose ~70% of its value as it seeks fresh funding 🤯; Musk sees payments & crypto as part of Twitter’s future 👀; Brex ditches SMEs, vertical that gave them their name 😬
Good Morning FinTech, 20 June
Good day Everyone,
And happy Monday! I hope you managed to relax a bit over the weekend as Monday is a very hot day in FinTech. Today we’re looking at Klarna potentially losing ~70% of its valuation (the beginning of Klarnageddon?), Musk’s vision for Twitter with payments & crypto at the core, and what Brex’s decision to ditch SMEs means (for Brex and SME FinTechs in general). Let’s jump straight into the good stuff:
Klarnageddon begins? Klarna to lose ~70% of its valuation as it seeks fresh funding 🤯
The scoop 👀 Swedish BNPL giant Klarna is reportedly looking into raising more funds at a significantly lower valuation, as per WSJ. This is yet another sign of how dire the current macro environment for tech companies is.
More on this 👉 It was earlier reported (and I’ve covered it here) that Klarna was seeking to raise as much as $1B at a $30B valuation, which was still a cut of around 30% of their last private valuation at a whopping $46B.
The company’s new talks could now result in a deal valuing the company at around $15B which means it might lose close to 70% from its peak valuation. One must add though that the current talks might end up with $500M – with no guarantee of a deal going forward.
Zooming out 🔭 Let’s zoom out a bit and look at Klarna from a distance:
It’s clear that growing more than 8 times in ~2 years wasn’t sustainable. It’s also clear that their growth is still impressive (not valuation-wise only), but the worrying sign is about Klarna’s future.
So Klarnageddon begins? Here’s the takeaway: