Crowdcube does some raising of its own, nets £10 million to fuel European market entry

UK-based crowdfunding platform Crowdcube has raised £10 million in a round led by Circle Internet Financial, owner and operator of SeedInvest, a US-based crowdfunding platform.

Only a few weeks back Crowdcube made some noise about their intent to be the first and only crowdfunding platform to have both UK and EU licenses, the buy-in from the US competitor signals that with the pan-European regulations coming into effect, the historically US and UK led market just got a whole lot bigger. And clearly, SeedInvest wants in.

“Combining Circle’s strategic investment with our decade of knowledge and experience of capital raising in Europe, Crowdcube is extremely well-positioned to capitalise on our first-mover advantage into Europe’s high growth investment market. Capital raising and private company investing have never been so exciting,” commented Crowdcube CEO Darren Westlake. “In the first instance, we’re considering a crowd round to offer Crowdcube’s community of investors the opportunity to participate in our round, alongside Circle, supporting our growth as Europe’s preferred private investment marketplace”.

The funding arrives as Crowdcube posted record numbers, with £200 million invested, a figure up 21% year-over-year and over 208,000 investments made. This, on top of the addition of 174,000 new members, upping Crowdcube’s numbers to a total of 1.2 million. The fintech’s valuation has increased by 57% to £140 million since its last funding round in 2018 and it has raised around £30 million in total from both institutional and retail investors.

In addition to Circle Internet Financial/SeedInvest (not to be confused with Vienna’s Speedinvest), existing Crowdcube backers Molten Ventures and Balderton Capital also participated in the funding round.