Global fintech funding remained subdued in 2024 due to major macroeconomic shifts and a change in investor outlook; however, many fintechs had success in recent months. 

Anthropic raises $4B from Amazon

Amazon has invested $4 billion in AI platform Anthropic, according to a Nov. 22 release from the e-commerce giant. 

Amazon Web Services will serve as Anthropic’s primary cloud platform and it will use AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia chips to develop its technology further, the release stated.

AWS added Anthropic’s AI models to its AI-driven Amazon Bedrock platform in April, Matt Garman, AWS chief executive, said in the release.  

“By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies,” he said. 

Anthropic has raised $13 billion since its inception in 2021, with $8 billion invested by Amazon in the past year, according to Crunchbase. 

Partior raises $20M from Deutsche Bank

Partior raised $20 million in a series B round from Deutsche Bank and other investors, according to the blockchain service provider’s release today. 

The money will be used to bolster the company’s global reach and scale cross-border payments capability through blockchain technology, according to the release. 

The Singapore-based company has raised $91 million since its inception in 2021 from investors including Standard Chartered Bank, DBS Bank and JPMorgan, according to Crunchbase. 

Sunbit raises $335M in debt facility

Buy now, pay later solution provider Sunbit closed a $355 million debt warehouse facility led by JPMorgan and Mizuho Bank on Nov. 4.  

The funds will be used to expand into new market segments including health care, CEO Arad Levertov told Bank Automation News. 

“Health care in general is something that we are getting into,” as the market is underserved and the company can gain a significant market share because of Sunbit’s easy-to-use and low-cost services, Levertov said. 

The Los Angeles-based company has raised $1.1 billion since its founding in 2016, according to Crunchbase. 

Melio raises $150M in series E

Melio has raised $150 million in a series E round led by Fiserv, Shopify and Capital One, the B2B payments provider announced Oct. 31. 

The money will be used to improve its product, grow its consumer base and expand its real-time payments options, a spokesperson told BAN. 

The New York-based company has raised $654 million since its inception in 2018 from investors including Accel and General Catalyst, according to Crunchbase. 

The macro

While global fintech funding dropped by 17.9% year over year in the third quarter to $17.9 billion, the U.S. remained a bright spot for fintechs looking to raise money. 

Fintechs in the U.S. raised $3.5 billion across 294 deals in Q3, compared to $3.5 billion during the corresponding period last year across 310 deals, according to an Oct. 15 CB Insights State of Fintech Funding Q3 report. 

Funding remained the same over fewer deals, meaning that venture capitalists are placing comparatively bigger bets on companies, a CB Insights spokesperson told BAN. 

“The other notable direction that fintech funding is flowing is toward later-stage companies as investors look to startups with more established track records” to diminish risk-taking, the spokesperson said. 

Fintech funding dropped from the high of $38 billion in Q4 2021 to $7.3 billion in Q3 2024, Benjamin Lawrence, managing analyst at CB Insights, said during the State of AI Funding webinar on Oct. 8, adding that pandemic-induced stimulus pushed fintech funding to highs that are slowly coming to equilibrium. 

“We’ll see funding levels rise, but it may take a decade to see those levels of success,” Lawrence said, adding that rate cuts might help boost fintech funding but it’s too early to say. 

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