In a round led by Nyca Partners, cloud native core banking technology platform Thought Machine has secured $200 million in new funding. The Series C investment gives the London-based fintech a valuation of more than $1 billion, giving the company so-called “unicorn status.”
Thought Machine will use the new capital to continue development and evolution of its flagship solution, Vault, and its Universal Product Engine. Vault leverages APIs and a microservice architecture to provide institutions with all of the functionality necessary to offer both retail and small business banking services. A system of smart contracts enables companies to configure Vault to support a variety of retail bank products including current and savings accounts, loans, credit cards, and mortgages. And as a cloud-based solution, Vault offers institutions security, flexibility, scalability, high availability, and an absence of friction.
Vault also enables institutions to better manage run and change costs so that banks only pay for the hardware they actually use and benefit from the ability to launch new products quickly and deploy upgrades to existing solutions with zero downtime.
“We set out to eradicate legacy technology from the industry and ensure that banks deployed on Vault can succeed and deliver on their ambitions,” Thought Machine founder and CEO Paul Taylor said. “These new funds will accelerate the delivery of Vault into banks around the world who wish to implement their future vision of financial services.”
Also participating in the Series C were new investors ING Ventures, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, and Standard Chartered Ventures. Existing investors Lloyds Banking Group, British Patient Capital, Eurazeo, SEB, Molten Ventures, Backed, and IQ Capital also contributed. Thought Machine has raised more than $348 million in equity funding to date.
Thought Machine demonstrated its core banking solution, Vault, in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2018. More recently, in September of this year, the company announced that JP Morgan Chase would replace its core banking suite with Thought Machine’s Vault. Also joining Chase in transitioning to Vault this fall was Arvest Bank, which operates a cohort of small, U.S.-based community banks. In April, Thought Machine announced an integration with fellow Finovate alum Wise (formerly Transferwise) to enable companies using Vault to access low-cost international fund transfers.
Founded in 2014, Thought Machine was named “B2B Fintech of the Year” by AltFiNews earlier this month.
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