Background: Airwallex is a payments giant founded in Melbourne in 2015, starting out with cross-border business payments before expanding into cards, spend management, and other financial services.

What happened: Airwallex hit $500 million USD in annual recurring revenue after nine years, and then doubled that to $US1 billion just a year later. Riding that surge, it has just raised $330 million USD in a Series G, valuing the company at $8 billion USD. The raise also followed a public spat with a US venture capitalist who accused Airwallex of sharing US customer data with China.

What else: Airwallex has pushed the controversy aside, announced their big raise and even said that it didn’t need the cash. Yep, this raise was all about keeping the momentum going and taking advantage of investor demand.

What's the key learning?

💡Raising capital isn’t always about necessity, it’s also about buying optionality. When a company is performing well, like Airwallex doubling its revenue in just 12 months, investors are eager to join, which allows the company to raise funds on highly favourable terms.

💡Strategically-minded startups often raise money when they have momentum rather than when they urgently need it. For example, in early 2022, the Australian customer research startup Dovetail raised $89 million at a $960 million valuation, describing the capital raising environment as “bubble like” and taking advantage of investor enthusiasm.

💡Being fully funded gives a company control over the timing of its future plans, including an initial public offering. Airwallex can now wait for the market to be favourable without rushing to list, because it is cashed up and has flexibility in its next steps.