Thought Machine lands $83m for banking expansion

A prominent cloud banking platform launched by former Google engineer Paul Taylor has secured a mega $83m funding line to drive the next phase of its growth and global expansion.

Founded in 2014 by entrepreneur Taylor, Thought Machine has built a core banking solution entirely in the cloud, counting Lloyds Banking Group, Standard Chartered, SEB and Atom Bank as clients.

The solution, Vault, enables established and challenger banks to compete in the cloud-based era and move away from the legacy IT platforms that plague the banking industry.

The multi-million-dollar funding will aid the firm’s mission to deploy modern cloud-native systems, continue investment in its core engineering capability, and help drive its global expansion into Asia Pacific.

Thought Machine’s existing investors, which include Lloyds Banking Group, IQ Capital, Backed and Playfair Capital, have participated in the round, with IQ Capital contributing £15m from its new scale up fund.

Venture capital firm Draper Esprit has also provided funding, following its investment in a range of high growth fintech businesses including Revolut, N26, TransferWise and Freetrade.

Last year, Thought Machine announced a major expansion in Asia Pacific with the opening of Thought Machine Singapore, which covers sales and marketing, and a dedicated services function to oversee the deployment of Vault into banks in the region.

The company, which is headquartered in London, is due to launch in North America later this year, while it also plans to establish a presence in Australia and Japan.

Taylor said the funding round comes at a pivotal stage in the company’s growth.

“Thought Machine’s revenues are very healthy, as we see cloud native banking become the most common desired target architecture for the world’s banks. The customer demand is huge, and this investment allows us to grow rapidly enough to serve all our target markets.

“As well as international expansion, we will put further investment into our core technology, ensuring that banks will always have the best possible cloud native platform, and allow them to keep up with technology breakthroughs in the future which bring agility, security, resilience and good economics,” Taylor added.

Max Bautin, founding partner of IQ Capital, believes Thought Machine has the potential to become one of the most valuable European fintech companies.

“We first backed Thought Machine at seed stage in 2016 and have seen it grow from a startup to a 300-person strong global scaleup.

“I am delighted to continue to support Paul and the team on this journey, with an additional £15m investment from our £100m Growth Fund, aimed at our venture portfolio outperformers,” Bautin said.