Pleo today works with more than 20,000 businesses and processes their employees’ aggregate annualised spend of over USD 1bn with strong customer satisfaction scores. This combined with the wealth of data Pleo has access to compounds with the lack of innovation from incumbents and means that Pleo’s addressable market can extend well beyond expense management into the offering of a holistic suite of financial tools to their clients.
Andreas Bernström, Senior Investment Director at Kinnevik, commented: “Over the last decade, technology has simplified many aspects of everyday behaviour in a transformative way. Pleo, similar to Slack and Zoom in their respective fields, is transforming the user experience in corporate spend management. The company’s success is a combination of relentless focus on product innovation and execution across marketing, automated onboarding, and go-to-market. Perhaps most importantly, the founders have a true commitment and focus on their own staff and company culture. We believe Pleo is in a unique position to become a category winner, and all of us at Kinnevik greatly look forward to continue supporting the company going forward.”
Jeppe Rindom, CEO and Co-Founder of Pleo, commented: “Andreas and Kinnevik clearly saw the potential of what we were building early on, and it is great to have had their continued support through each of our last four funding rounds. Kinnevik is a firm with a long-term view and without investment constraints, which as a fast-growing company is a great combination of strengths to have supporting your development.”
The USD 200m financing round, co-led by Alkeon and Coatue, ascribes Pleo a valuation of USD 4.5bn pre-money. This is around 180 percent higher than the valuation of Pleo reflected in the SEK 2.0bn fair value of Kinnevik’s investment in its Interim Report for the third quarter of 2021. The reassessed fair value of Kinnevik’s investment in Pleo will be finalized and reported in Kinnevik’s Interim Report for the fourth quarter, to be published on 3 February 2022, considering a number of factors in addition to the funding round.