Co-founder and CMO, Yokoy
Yokoy has raised $80 million in a Series B round, led by the famous US investment firm Sequoia Capital, with participation also from Speedinvest, Visionaries Club, Zinal Growth, and all existing investors.
After announcing our Series A funding at the end of last year, we now have the next big funding announcement to share. Yokoy has raised $80 million in a Series B round, led by the famous US investment firm Sequoia Capital, with participation also from Speedinvest, Visionaries Club, Zinal Growth, and all existing investors.
The new funding will further feed into the continued growth of our business and team, helping us on our journey to revolutionize the way companies spend money.
Just five months after our Series A round, we are excited to announce that we successfully raised $80 million in our Series B led by venture capital luminary Sequoia Capital. The firm is not the only new high-profile investor, as we are also welcoming Speedinvest, Visionaries Club, Zinal Growth and well-known business angels to the fold. All the while, our existing investors – Balderton Capital, Six FinTech Ventures, Left Lane, and Swisscom Ventures – are stepping up as well.
Sharing this excitement is Philippe Sahli, Co-Founder and CEO of Yokoy: “Embarking on the next stage of our growth journey, it is amazing to have the backing of Sequoia Capital – the most prestigious venture capital firm in the world. Taking together all our new and existing investors, we simply have the best of the best backing us.”
With the new $80 million Series B, we now have raised more than $107 million in total. “There are many areas where this new funding will come to use,” Sahli says. In brief, all signs point to continued growth: After having set up our European hub in Amsterdam just a month ago, we are aiming to expand further into Europe and beyond in the course of this year.
Apart from that, we will increase hiring and enhance the technologies underpinning our spend management platform – from further developing our AI, finance automation and security systems, to advancing our Yokoy Pay offering.
Putting software first as the true differentiator
Looking back, a lot has happened since we got off the ground in 2019: What started as a solution focused on expenses has since expanded into a comprehensive enterprise spend management platform that combines expense management, supplier invoice management as well as smart corporate cards and automates respective processes with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
“Our goal is to rid the corporate spending world of the legacy processes that have plagued it for decades,” Sahli explains.
What sets Yokoy apart? For us and the new investor Sequoia it is clearly the focus on software first: “Many companies in this sector have a payment service at their core,” Sahli says. “However, our customers do not just want corporate cards, they want a solution that automates all their spend management processes – integrated into their existing IT landscape.”
Yokoy’s software platform enables exactly that, allowing for actual end-to-end automation across the entire spend management journey by seamlessly integrating into the existing systems of customers.
The success speaks for itself
With a focus on midsize and enterprise level companies, Yokoy has proven that this approach bears fruit. “Yokoy shows that spend management does not have to be a cumbersome and expensive process for global companies,” Sahli says.
“Our platform is ideally suited for addressing the complexities prevalent in such setups, allowing customers to build individual process flows according to their needs. Thus, we are becoming their ultimate spend management partner.”
It’s the dedication to solving the unique pain points of customers that has seen us grow 400% year on year and already reach over 500 enterprise customers – such as ASK Chemicals, On, and Bitpanda.
Changing the way companies spend money
For us, completing the Series B round now opens a completely new chapter. “Over the last three years, we have proven that we understand the needs of our customers and that we can build innovative, enterprise-grade products that address their problems,” Sahli says.
But that is just the beginning: “In the end we do not want to be just another company that automates processes or that claims to have better company credit cards – we want to change the way companies spend money at its core. Given the trust that our investors have put in us, we are sure that we are on the right track.”
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