BlackFin Tech Weekly - January 5th, 2026
Every week, we publish a short digest which sums up last week’s Fintech activity
Hello FinTech Friends,
Welcome to another week of fintech insights. Let’s explore the news and trends shaping the industry!
Over the last three weeks, there were four fintech deals in Europe, raising a total of €45.1 million, including three transactions in the UK and one in Denmark.
Congratulations to the three largest rounds announced last week:
Ben, a UK-based tech platform that centralizes and automates employee benefits management for enterprises, has raised €23.8m in a Series B round led by Mercia Ventures.
Sequence, a UK-based finance operations platform that automates end-to-end revenue workflows (quotes, billing, invoicing) for B2B finance teams, has raised €17m in a Series A round led by 645 Ventures.
Gavmild, a Denmark-based insurtech insurance broker, has raised €3.4m in a Venture round backed by business angels.
Let’s dive in!
Ben: headquartered in London, offers an AI-powered platform that consolidates and automates employee benefits management for global enterprises, connecting employers, employees, brokers, and providers. The company has raised €23.8m in a Series B round led by Mercia Ventures, with participation from Atomico, Cherry Ventures, DN Capital, and Seedcamp, plus new backing from QuantumLight Capital. The proceeds will be used to accelerate the product roadmap and strengthen go-to-market capabilities, supporting expansion across markets
Sequence: a London and New York based company, builds AI agents that automate B2B revenue operations (quote-to-cash workflows such as quotes, billing, invoicing, and revenue recognition) for finance teams. The company has secured a €17m Series A round led by 645 Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Firstminute Capital, Passion Capital, DIG Ventures, and Vor Capital, alongside strategic angels. The funds will be used to deepen product development and scale engineering and go-to-market to expand agentic automation across revenue operations
Gavmild: based in Denmark, operates an insurance brokerage platform positioning itself as a challenger in the local insurance market. The company has raised €3.4m in a Venture round backed by business angels (new and existing investors). The new capital will be used to accelerate the next growth phase, with a stated objective to triple its portfolio in 2026 and further strengthen its market position
In addition to this week’s fundraising activity, here is the European M&A activity for the week:
Monzo, a UK-based neobank serving more than 14 million personal and 800,000 business customers, has announced the acquisition of Habito, a UK-based digital mortgage brokerage platform. The deal marks Monzo’s first-ever acquisition and will see Habito’s mortgage proposition integrated into the Monzo app, enabling customers to find, compare, and secure mortgages directly within the bank’s ecosystem. Habito’s CEO, Ying Tan, will remain in place to lead the next phase of growth post-transaction
Trading Technologies (TT), a Chicago and London based capital markets technology platform providing a multi-asset trading SaaS suite, has announced the acquisition of OpenGamma, a London-based derivatives analytics firm specializing in margin analytics and capital optimization for buy-side and sell-side clients. The deal strengthens TT’s analytics and risk stack by integrating OpenGamma’s margin optimization and capital efficiency tools into the TT platform, enabling more automated trading and position-transfer workflows designed to reduce risk and improve operational efficiency, while expanding OpenGamma’s reach through TT’s global distribution
Greenstep, a Finland-founded European professional services and fund administration group, has acquired 100% of the shares of Rundit, a Finland-based portfolio management and investor reporting platform for venture capital, private equity, and other investment firms. The deal supports Greenstep’s ambition to build a new end-to-end, highly automated fund services platform by combining Rundit’s front-end investor/portfolio reporting technology with Greenstep’s fund accounting and back-office operations expertise, enabling more seamless data flows, transparency, and efficiency across the fund lifecycle, with a stated goal to scale the solution across Europe
And finally, we bring you four news stories that caught our eye last week:
Trade Republic said investors agreed to back the German broker at a €12.5bn valuation in a €1.2bn secondary share sale, with buyers including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Sequoia, Fidelity, Wellington and Singapore’s GIC, alongside investment arms linked to the Arnault and Agnelli families (no fresh capital raised). The transaction involved the purchase of shares from early investors such as Creandum and Project A, and includes existing backers Accel, TCV and Thrive, underscoring the growing use of secondary markets for late-stage start-ups amid a difficult European IPO backdrop. Trade Republic’s valuation has jumped from €5bn in 2022 to €12.5bn, supported by more than 10m customers, though the EU ban on “payment for order flow” in Germany next year could hit revenues
PayPal said it has submitted applications to the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the FDIC to create PayPal Bank, arguing a charter would improve efficiency and expand lending to small businesses. The group said it has provided more than $30bn in loans and capital to 420,000+ business customers since 2013, and that a US licence would reduce reliance on third parties and allow FDIC insurance for customer deposits. The move follows a broader push by crypto and fintech groups to seek US bank charters amid a more permissive regulatory climate, with applicants this year including Nubank and Coinbase; PayPal said it would appoint Mara McNeill, former head of Toyota’s financing business, to run the regulated entity if approved
SoftBank Group agreed to acquire DigitalBridge, a US investor in data centres and telecoms infrastructure, for about $4bn, extending Masayoshi Son’s AI-driven dealmaking as he ramps up bets tied to OpenAI and the Stargate AI infrastructure project. SoftBank will pay $16 a share in cash, a 15% premium to Friday’s close, valuing DigitalBridge at roughly $4bn including debt; the target manages more than $100bn of assets spanning data centres, cell towers and fibre networks. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026 subject to regulatory approvals, with CEO Marc Ganzi continuing to run DigitalBridge as a separately managed platform, while investors weigh SoftBank’s funding needs for a planned OpenAI commitment exceeding $30bn and growing concerns about froth in AI markets
Crypto dealmaking reached a record $8.6bn in 2025, with 267 transactions completed, up 18% year on year and nearly four times 2024’s $2.17bn, according to PitchBook data through December 23. The year’s biggest deals included Coinbase’s $2.9bn acquisition of derivatives venue Deribit, Kraken’s $1.5bn purchase of NinjaTrader, and Ripple’s $1.25bn buy of prime broker Hidden Road, even as bitcoin fell from an early-October peak near $126,000 to around $90,000. Lawyers and advisers expect more consolidation in 2026, citing the Trump administration’s crypto-friendly policy stance and incoming rulebooks that could pull in traditional financial institutions and raise compliance costs, with buyers increasingly targeting companies for their regulatory licences
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Have a great start into the week!
*The information presented in this publication comes from publicly available sources. While the management company uses strict data selection criteria and focuses on the reliability of its sources, it cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies, omissions, or errors in the data provided. This publication is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation.