Small Business News
Brex Announces Small Business “All-In-One Financial Solution” While Raising $425 Million
This morning, the FinTech Brex came out with not one but two big announcements. In addition to boasting its latest funding mega-round, the company also revealed its Brex Premium platform for small businesses.
Brex Premium bills itself as an “all-in-one-finance solution” for businesses featuring support for credit cards and business cash accounts alongside bill pay and spend management tools. With the service, Brex customers will be able to issue corporate and vendor cards, track expenses across multiple departments, automate bill pay, and much more. It will also soon add automatic employee reimbursement options. While the new service comes at a cost of $49 a month, it does include unlimited users and offers a 30-day free trial. Additionally, customers can choose to pay their monthly fee using Brex points.
The reveal of Brex Premium comes in tandem with the announcement that the company has closed a $425 million funding round. This Series D was led by Tiger Global with participation from new and returning investors such as TCV, Y Combinator Continuity, Ribbit Capital, and several others. Impressively, the round valued the company at $7.4 billion, which is more than double the $3 billion tag last year’s Series C put on the firm. To date, Brex has now raised a total of more than $940 million.
Announcing the Brex Premium product, the company’s CTO Cosmin Nicolaesc stated, “Growing and maintaining a business should not depend on how good a small business owner is at managing their finances. Our all-in-one finance solution gives business owners peace of mind, and the time back to do more of what they love and remember why they started their business.” Elsewhere, Scott Shleifer of Tiger Global — which led the Series D investment round for Brex — said of the firm, “Brex is building the future of finance for the next generation of businesses. We are excited to partner with them as they continue growing rapidly, innovating their product offerings, expanding their customer base and leading an industry that is dominated by incumbents.”
Between the launch of Brex Premium and the company raising a significant sum of cash, Brex could well be in its way to become a major force in small to mid-size business finance. This would put them in competition with the likes of Square, Intuit, and others. Ultimately, while Brex may have some catching up to do, it definitely seems as though the firm is up for the challenge. In turn, the real winners are small business owners who will now have more options to choose from when it comes to finding a platform to help them manage their business finances.
