French accounting software startup Pennylane has become France’s latest unicorn by raising another €40 million from its historic investors, Sequoia and DST Global. While funding has plunged worldwide, the young fintech Pennylane has been steadily raising funds on an annual basis since its inception. Started by raising €4 million in 2020, Pennylane raised €30m in 2021, followed by €50m in 2022 and €30m in 2023.
The latest valuation of Pennylane has reached over €1 billion, making it France’s latest unicorn (name given to start-ups valued at €1 billion), a feat in the fintech sector. With this status, Pennylane has joined the closed circle of companies like Qonto, Payfit, Ledger, Alan, Younited, Lydia, Spendesk, Swile and Shift.
Pennylane is an accounting software-as-a-service company that brings together all the tools and integrations necessary to manage the expenses, invoicing, cash flow and accounting of a company. The vision is to develop the first platform that combines production software for accountants and a financial management tool for VSEs/ SMEs. In the last two years, the company has seen exceptional growth with customers increasing 40-fold than previous years. Today, Pennylane has extended its reach to over 120,000 SMEs who are using Pennylane on a daily basis and over 2,000 accounting firms that have adopted its solutions.
Pennylane is an open platform that aims to connect all business management tools. By centralizing all of the business data in real time – bank accounts, customer and supplier invoices – Pennylane allows clients to have better visibility of their finances.
The company will use its latest funding to accelerate development of its various modules. It also aims to invest heavily in AI and introduce a chatbot specific to the accounting needs to further
support accounting firms in their transition to automation.
Arthur Waller, co-founder of Pennylane shares that they want to support accounts in shifting their focus towards consulting, updating skills of employees and attracting young talent. The company also plans to broaden the capabilities of their platform by adopting external growth strategies over the next five years.
