Upvest raises €30m from BlackRock and existing investors to continue winning the Investment API category in Europe

Berlin, 11. October 2023. Upvest, a Berlin-based leading fintech providing modern investment infrastructure, announces the successful closure of its funding round, securing a €30m investment. The round was led by Upvest’s existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, HV Capital, Earlybird, Notion, ABN Amro Ventures, Partech, and 10x Capital, with a new addition from BlackRock. This funding is one of the largest German fintech rounds in 2023 and will strengthen Upvest’s position as the Investment API category leader. With the new capital, Upvest is on a path towards profitability and will continue being fintechs’ first choice for investment infrastructure. Further, the funding will enable Upvest to enhance its product offering and regional expansion with leading fintechs, banks and wealth managers.

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These include financial institutions with an existing investment offering that want to expand their product offering with new use cases such as fractional shares or tailored portfolios, plan to expand internationally across Europe, and want to reduce their overall investment infrastructure costs. It further includes companies that plan to offer investment products for the first time and want to benefit from Upvest’s seamless API to launch investment solutions in weeks instead of years. Upvest's platform facilitates investment asset classes such as stocks, ETFs, and some mutual funds and can be easily extended to further asset classes like bonds, derivatives, and crypto, as well as any investment use case enabled by the fractional trading engine. 

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Large fintechs such as Revolut and Raisin Bank and digital wealth managers such as Plum already partner with Upvest to offer best-in-class savings plans, tailored investment portfolios, and real-time fractional investing in any asset class offered by Upvest. Next to Upvest’s proprietary core investment technology, it is also a BaFin-regulated investment firm and covers all middle- and back-office processes for its clients in a compliant and scalable way.

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“We are excited to embark on this next growth phase with the support of our existing investors and BlackRock”, says Martin Kassing, co-founder and CEO of Upvest. “With this funding, we will be empowered to continue on our mission of making investing as easy as spending money. The funding and partnership with BlackRock enable us to double down on building the leading investment infrastructure and accelerating retail investment adoption in Europe.”

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Timo Toenges, Head of iShares EMEA Digital Wealth business at BlackRock, comments: “Millions of Europeans are embracing investing for the first time to build a better financial future for themselves. BlackRock’s partnership with Upvest will drive innovation in how Europeans access markets and make it cheaper and simpler to start investing. Across Europe ETFs are at the core of these new propositions and often the default choice for investors, as a transparent, low cost and easily understood starting point for a new generation of investors.”

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“Upvest is poised for significant growth in the investment infrastructure space. We are excited to be part of their journey since day one and to double down in this round. This funding underscores their strong and unique position in the market; we believe that with Upvest’s Investment API (covering brokerage, settlement, and custody), any financial institution can now easily build modern investment experiences. By providing low-cost investment solutions, financial institutions can increase the availability and accessibility of investment solutions for millions of their customers. We're proud of the team for continuing on this strong track!”, says Tim Rehder, Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital.