One among Africa’s fintech giants, Chipper Money, is alleged to be weighing the potential for promoting the enterprise or bringing in new buyers. Based on the CEO of the FTX and Silicon Valley Financial institution-backed fintech startup, Chipper Money had insignificant publicity to each SVB and Signature Financial institution.
Chipper Money ‘By no means Sought to Be Acquired’
The FTX and Silicon Valley Financial institution (SVB) backed-African fintech large, Chipper Money, is weighing choices together with the sale of the enterprise or bringing in new buyers, a Bloomberg report that cites unnamed sources has stated. Based on the report, the fintech, which started exploring its choices earlier than SVB’s abrupt collapse, is but to make a closing determination on which plan of action it would take.
As beforehand reported by Bitcoin.com Information in late 2021, Chipper Money efficiently raised $150 million in a Sequence C extension that was led by the now-collapsed crypto change FTX. SVB, which led the primary Sequence C, additionally participated within the spherical as did Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, One Method Ventures, and Tribe Capital.
Nevertheless, following a turbulent 2022 which climaxed with FTX’s collapse, Chipper Money noticed its valuation drop from $2 billion within the fourth quarter (This autumn) of 2022 to $1.25 billion by Dec. 2022. Confronted with rising prices, Chipper Money additionally trimmed its workforce.
Insignificant Publicity to SVB
In the meantime, the shutdown of SVB by U.S. authorities is reported to have fueled hypothesis that Chipper Money — a shopper of SVB — could be arduous hit by the financial institution’s demise. Nevertheless, in a press release despatched to Bloomberg, Chipper Money insisted that the house owners had by no means thought-about promoting the enterprise.
“It’s been pretty widespread apply for us to obtain numerous M&A proposals from completely different events, which we consider to various levels. That being stated, we have now by no means sought to be acquired,” the fintech reportedly stated.
In his March 12 message to stakeholders, Chipper Money co-founder and CEO Ham Serunjogi claimed the fintech unicorn had insignificant publicity to each SVB and Signature Financial institution. On the time of SVB’s collapse, Chipper Money had about $1 million held on the financial institution.
Serunjogi additionally sought to downplay SVB’s perceived affect on the fintech by pointing to the collapsed financial institution’s shareholding in Chipper Money.
“SVB wasn’t the one investor in that spherical – we had a number of different new and present buyers take part within the $100m spherical – and SVB owns a really small a part of Chipper ~2%. Chipper may be very lucky to have a really broad and supportive investor base that has supported us from our earliest days and continues to take action at this time,” the CEO stated.
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