Pleo becomes a unicorn - and expands big in Germany

The Danish fintech is valued at 1.7 billion US dollars. The start-up wants to double the size of its office in Berlin and sees Germany in a key role.

The Danish fintech Pleo is banking on the fact that most people are annoyed when they have to do their expense reports again. The hope is that things are still quite bureaucratic in many companies, many emails are exchanged and employees end up sitting on them longer than they should. Pleo wants to solve this with a "smart" credit card and accounting software and has now been able to convince investors once again.

Pleo has raised 150 million US dollars in a Series C financing round and is now valued at 1.7 billion US dollars. This makes the start-up the first Danish company in this financing phase to become a unicorn, i.e. a company worth more than one billion euros. The financing round was led by US investors Thrive Capital and Bain Capital Ventures. The company now has a total of more than 200 million US dollars in outside capital.

As is usually the case with financing rounds, the money will naturally flow into the team and the product. Pleo also wants to use it to expand significantly and double its workforce in Berlin from the current 40 to 80. Germany is considered a key location for the company. It has 1600 of its 17,000 corporate customers in Germany and 200 are added every month, which accounts for around 25 percent of Pleo's new business. Alongside the UK, Germany is currently the second largest of six markets in which the fintech is represented.

Berlin is also set to become a hub from which the company intends to support its expansion into other countries such as Austria. Most recently, two high-ranking Pleo executives, Arun Mani as Chief Revenue Officer and Haresh Bajaj as Vice President Product Growth, have already moved to Berlin, with a third soon to follow.

"The future of work gives employees the tools they need to be effective, productive and successful. Pleo understood this critical shift for modern companies towards employee-centricity early on," praises Keri Gohman, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures.

Kareem Zaki, General Partner at Thrive Capital, says: "Pleo has already transformed the way more than 17,000 organizations manage their spend. It saves them time and reduces costs while increasing transparency. We look forward to working closely with Pleo's team and helping to drive the company's next phase of growth."