British investment platform PrimaryBid is looking to expand across Europe and into the U.S. following the close of a $190 million Series C funding round.
The company announced the round — led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 — in a news release Monday (Feb. 21), saying the funding came after a period of growth last year, with a number of public companies, initial public offering candidates and the U.K.’s “capital markets ecosystem” adopting PrimaryBid’s platform.
The last 18 months have seen more than 150 follow-on and IPO transactions listed on PrimaryBid. The company also expanded its API services into Europe, carried out its inaugural transaction in France and unveiled a new retail bond product.
“Our ambition is to democratize public market offerings through a combination of technology, data and advocacy,” said Anand Sambasivan, CEO and co-founder of PrimaryBid. “Our platform deepens the relationships public companies have with their stakeholders and helps them make their equity and debt offerings more inclusive.”
The company said its platform allows “individual investors to share in a company’s success” by giving issuers a safe way to include stakeholders and institutional investors at IPO and subsequent capital markets transactions.
Launched in 2016, PrimaryBid raised $50 million in Series B funding in October 2020, and since become fully-regulated in the EU.
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Last year saw the platform used for the U.K. IPOs of Deliveroo and PensionBee, and the American IPO of MCG Group (Soho House), which used PrimaryBid to offer access to its members in the U.K. Also last year, venture capital company Forward Partners, Draper Esprit and Augmentum used PrimaryBid to open early-stage funding rounds and public offerings to individual investors.
