Airwallex raises US$300 million in Series F funding round

[SINGAPORE] Airwallex has raised US$300 million in a Series F funding round with Visa’s corporate venture arm Visa Ventures coming on board as an investor, it announced on Wednesday (May 21). This brings the fintech startup’s valuation to US$6.2 billion.

Other investors in the round include Square Peg, DST Global, Salesforce Ventures and a number of other Australian venture capital and pension funds. Of the US$300 million raised, US$150 million was in secondary share transfers, cashing out earlier investors.

The financial platform that manages payments and business accounts reported a 50 per cent growth in its customers base in 2024, serving 150,000 businesses worldwide. Airwallex has more than 60 licences and over 50 relationships with banks and financial institutions.

The company currently employs over 1,700 people in 26 offices globally. Airwallex expects to hit US$1 billion in annual run rate revenue in 2025.

The funding will be used to expand into new markets and build new features on Airwallex’s platform. The fintech is moving into non-payment products and services such as spend management, money market funds and artificial intelligence (AI), Lucy Liu, president and co-founder of Airwallex, told The Business Times.

“Going forward, the Middle East and some of the other South-east Asian countries will be our primary focus,” she said.

Airwallex has started to invest in Vietnam, and its priority is to strengthen its capabilities there. This would include building out the local team to establish a presence in the country.

In Malaysia, Airwallex is looking to further expand its capabilities and onboard more Malaysian companies. Indonesia remains on the company’s radar, and is close to establishing a physical presence there, said Liu.

She is not ruling out further fundraising, with this Series F round a means to update Airwallex’s valuation and not so much a pre-inital public offering (IPO) round. The company last raised US$100 million at US$5.6 billion valuation back in October 2022, as part of a Series E extension round.

Liu added: “If you compare that to the current valuation that we have now, it is not a massive round; we are on the path to get ourselves pre-IPO ready.”

Airwallex is still targeting to list in the US, but has not narrowed down whether it would be a Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange listing.

AI will be a top priority for Airwallex over the next 12 months. This would see the company build “AI capabilities into our operations, as well as customer-facing functionalities”, explained Liu.