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Expense reports are boring, but the business behind them clearly is not: The New York fintech Ramp is raising about $1.85 billion (about €1.65 billion) at a pre-money valuation of $60 billion (about €53 billion), Bloomberg reported. The round is led by Dragoneer and Thrive Capital, with Founders Fund also writing a large check.
From $44 Billion to $60 Billion in Four Months
The pace is breathtaking. Only in June, Ramp raised $750 million (about €670 million) in a Series F at a $44 billion valuation, led by ICONIQ, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. In April 2024, the company was valued at $7.65 billion. Before the new round, Ramp had raised about $3 billion (about €2.7 billion) in total.
Growth is driving the rally. According to Bloomberg, Ramp passed $1.5 billion (about €1.3 billion) in annualized revenue by early June. The company says it has more than 50,000 customers who run more than $100 billion a year through the platform. Total payment volume recently grew about 170 percent from a year earlier.
From Corporate Card to A.I. Finance Department
Ramp was founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, the chief executive, and Karim Atiyeh, the chief technology officer. The start-up began with corporate credit cards and automated expense reports for start-ups. Today it also offers payment processing, A.I.-powered fraud detection and Stack, a product for accounting firms. Its newest focus is corporate spending on A.I.: In August, Ramp launched Router.com, a free router for A.I. models and an alternative to OpenRouter.
Ramp is also eyeing Europe. In March, it bought the Stockholm payments company Billhop to obtain licenses for Britain and the European Union. Since the summer, European companies have been able to use Ramp directly, with teams in London and Stockholm.
A High Multiple and Tough Competition
There, Ramp faces established rivals. Copenhagen’s Pleo is betting on its own A.I. agents for finance teams, and the Berlin spend management start-up Moss has also become a unicorn. The market’s intensity was underlined by another deal: The Berlin fintech Circula was bought by Personio. In the United States, American Express is the big incumbent rival.
The new valuation works out to roughly 40 times Ramp’s revenue run rate as of early summer, a multiple more typical of A.I. companies. How quickly such prices can come back to earth is shown by Ramp’s closest U.S. competitor: Brex was sold to Capital One this year for $5.15 billion (about €4.6 billion), according to Bloomberg, less than a tenth of Ramp’s new valuation.
