Grab pays 3.7 times the week's nine fintech rounds combined for control of Atome

The nine rounds with a disclosed size in Crowdfund Insider's weekly tally add to $401.4m ^[16]. Grab's $1.49bn for a majority of Atome is about 3.7 times the entire venture column ^[17]. That comparison is generous to the venture column. Limetax's $41.3m is roughly $7m of early-stage equity plus about $34.3m of loan ^[10][18], and only $10m of Velocity's $48m Series A was last week's extension ^[8]. Strip both out and the genuinely new equity announced is about $329.1m ^[22]. On that basis Grab is paying 4.5 times the week's venture money for one company ^[23].

What the $1.49bn buys is a loan book. Atome lends and sells buy-now-pay-later credit across Southeast Asia ^[2], so a majority owner takes on the receivables, the funding of them and the loss rates. Crowdfund Insider reports the price and calls the stake a majority, but did not state the percentage or an implied valuation ^[24].

Kaiko's extension is the other kind of transaction entirely. The $110m came from 14 named investors with S&P Global leading ^[4][19]. Most of them are institutions that consume market data: Nasdaq Ventures, Broadridge, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Canada, DRW Venture Capital, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, Coinbase Ventures, Stellar, the Canton Foundation, Bpifrance, Anthemis, Point Nine and Revaia ^[5]. Kaiko sells data services for on-chain finance ^[6].

A5X's cap table has the same shape. The Brazilian exchange confirmed $70m late-stage from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Kaszek, with IMC, Jump Trading, Optiver, XTX Markets and ABN Amro Clearing continuing to participate ^[7]. Velocity's $10m extension brought in Visa, Circle and Ripple ^[8].

So the strategics are indeed writing checks into data and venue businesses, and they are writing them small. Kaiko's whole extension is 27% of the week's disclosed venture money ^[20]. A minority position in a data vendor buys a seat and early sight of the product without consolidating anyone's credit losses. In my view Grab's is the harder commitment of the two, because a majority owner of a consumer lender funds the next cohort of loans whether or not the last one performed.

A $110m round can buy a larger share of a data vendor's enterprise value than $1.49bn buys of Atome's, and the disclosure stops short of letting you check ^[24]. Gross consideration for control and primary equity into nine private companies are two different quantities. Rank the week by enterprise value changing hands instead of cash paid and the order may well invert.