GoKawiilMercury, a fintech firm that provides banking services to startups, has raised $200 million in funding at a $5.2 billion valuation, CNBC has learned exclusively.
That valuation is 49% higher than the San Francisco-based company's previous funding round just 14 months ago, bucking the downturn facing much of the fintech sector.
The Series D round was led by venture firm TCV — backer of other well-known fintech firms, including Revolut and Nubank — and included existing investors Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Coatue, Mercury CEO Immad Akhund told CNBC.
Mercury has emerged in recent years as one of a select group of fintech firms, like the larger payments startups Ramp and Stripe, that have continued to thrive after the collapse of the inflated valuations of the pandemic era.
Mercury, with more than 300,000 customers, including a third of early-stage U.S. startups, has been profitable for the past four years and recently hit $650 million in annualized revenue, Akhund said.
While generative AI has hurt many startups created before the arrival of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, it has also fueled the formation of new companies — a trend that Mercury, which opens accounts for businesses at their earliest stage, has directly benefited from, according to Akhund.
"We've seen a lot of growth, especially recently, and a lot of that comes down to AI being a big enabler for entrepreneurship," he said. "We're seeing a lot of people doing AI startups, but also non-AI companies where they're using AI to build an app really easily or build products and websites really quickly."
The fundraising comes weeks after Mercury disclosed it received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a federally regulated bank, part of a wave of fintech and crypto firms seeking entry to the traditional banking system dominated by established lenders.