Molten Ventures participates in $190 million Series C in fintech PrimaryBid

Today we are delighted to announce that Molten Ventures has participated in a $190m Series C funding round in PrimaryBid, the fintech platform that provides retail investors with fair access to public markets.

PrimaryBid’s platform provides a safe and frictionless way for issuers to include their stakeholders and loyal communities in IPOs and subsequent capital market transactions, allowing individual investors to share in a company’s success alongside institutional investors. The platform was used for a number of high-profile IPOs in 2021, including Deliveroo, PensionBee, and the US IPO of MCG Group (Soho House), which used PrimaryBid to provide access to its UK members.

Molten also used the PrimaryBid platform to allow retail investors to participate in its £111m raise in June 2021. Since its $50m Series B funding round in October 2020, which Molten also participated in, PrimaryBid has become fully regulated in the EU, launched alongside Euronext in France in June 2021, and helped hundreds of thousands of individual investors participate in capital market transactions.

This round follows a year of strong growth for PrimaryBid, with sustained adoption of the platform by high profile public companies, IPO candidates, and the UK capital markets ecosystem. In the past 18 months, over 150 follow-on and IPO transactions have listed on the platform in the UK. PrimaryBid has also expanded its API services into Europe, conducting its inaugural transaction in France, and launched a new retail bond product. Proceeds from the round will be used to expand PrimaryBid’s offering across continental Europe, leveraging strategic partnerships with ABN AMRO and Euronext, as well as launch in new regions including the USA.

The funds will also be used to fuel product innovation and team growth, with key executive hires to be announced in the coming months. The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Molten Ventures, as well as a number of other existing investors.

Anand Sambasivan, CEO and Co-founder of PrimaryBid, said:

“Our ambition is to democratize public market offerings through a combination of technology, data and advocacy. Our platform deepens the relationships public companies have with their stakeholders and helps them make their equity and debt offerings more inclusive. We are proud to welcome SoftBank to our ownership and thank our existing investors for their continued support. This fundraising will enable us to deliver PrimaryBid’s infrastructure to companies internationally, expand our product portfolio, and attract best-in-class technology and capital markets talent”,

Vinoth Jayakumar, Partner, Molten Ventures added:

“Primary Bid and Molten have strong shared goals. We listed on the public markets in 2016 to democratise access to the VC asset class, PrimaryBid is facilitating democratisation of the public markets in itself. It has shown fantastic commercial traction owing to its ability to solve problems that have blighted the capital markets for decades: PrimaryBid is the first to bring the technology and the buy-in from market participants to build infrastructure software.

“It has won the hearts and minds of the stock exchanges and facilitators such as investment banks and law firms. We are delighted to be able to continue backing PrimaryBid as it revolutionises a market that has for too long been stale.”