QED Investors is an investment firm that supports high-growth companies and businesses. The firm typically provides a combination of both capital and capability. But common to all the firm's partnerships is a shared conviction that information plays a decisive role in the success of the company, a mutual desire for a high degree of direct engagement, and a shared enthusiasm for experimentation and learning.

QED Investors

VentureSouq (VSQ) is a MENA-based venture capital fund manager with a global portfolio. VSQ manages thematic funds, with a current focus on FinTech and ClimateTech.

VentureSouq

Picus Capital is an early-stage technology investment firm with a long-term investment philosophy. We work together with daring technology companies to build successful, global companies challenging the status quo and shaping tomorrow. We want to become the closest partner of our portfolio companies by working together on key strategic decisions and operative challenges. As a privately financed venture capital investor with long-term and flexible capital we are looking for exceptional founders who are committed to building category leaders throughout the next 5-10+ years. We invest in early-stage technology ventures with a focus on financial services, HR, energy & climate, healthcare, logistics & mobility, real estate & construction, crypto & web3, deeptech and e-commerce. Picus makes initial investments in pre-seed, seed and series A ventures thereby starting to work together with entrepreneurs in various stages of their companies ranging from ideation phase to initial traction. We follow a very long-term investment approach investing significant amounts throughout the lifecycle of the companies. We have invested in over 50 companies to date. At Picus we work in a culture combining the discipline of a financial investor with the creativity and pragmatism of an entrepreneur. We follow a comprehensive and well-structured investment approach in order to identify the most attractive and ambitious investment opportunities in our target industries and geographies. Within our core investment team every member has a distinctive industry competence and a functional or geographic focus. We are working closely together with our portfolio companies to develop large and successful market leaders. This comprises in particular leveraging our marketing & sales expertise and our global market perspective to provide strategic advice, providing HR management to grant access to top talent, connecting our portfolio companies with our broad B2B & investor network as well as supporting the fundraising process.

Picus Capital

CM Ventures is a venture capital firm that provides investments in B2B and B2C markets. The firm was founded in 2020 by Nikolay Dyachkov and Vagan Khranyan and is based in London, United Kingdom.

CM Ventures

West Quad Ventures invest in startups that aspire to be leaders in their respective category, teams we believe in with an emphasis on what’s good for the world!

West Quad Ventures

Kosinski Ventures is a millennial-focused early stage family fund specialized in entrepreneurial investments.

Kosinski Ventures

The firm invests in both primary rounds, tenders, and secondary transactions with company executives or employees. We are focused primarily on US-based companies with some concentration in Africa & LATAM FinTech.

Ethos VC

Driving Forces is a pre-seed and seed stage VC fund that purposefully partners with founders building scalable infrastructure, automated workflows, intelligent collaboration tools, and autonomous systems.  Driving Forces has proven, repeated success at building and scaling transformational businesses. We believe FinTech and DeepTech are not sectors, they're driving forces across all industries. We believe every company will be powered by Artificial Intelligence. We believe every company will a be Fintech company. We believe that Sustainability will be embedded into the mission of every company. Additionally, we believe industrialization will revolutionize the world around us.

Driving Forces

WndrCo is a holding company that acquires, operates, and develops businesses at the intersection of technology and media.

WndrCo

Tribe Capital is a top-quartile venture capital firm focused on capturing a perpetual edge in venture and crypto using data science. The team is made up of investors, engineers and scientists who use artificial intelligence (“AI”) and data science to model venture-backed private companies. Beyond investment capital, Tribe deploys these AI tools to separate signal from noise, helping our companies understand their businesses better.  Our data-informed strategy includes an underwriting infrastructure and a quantitative analysis tool called the “Magic 8-ball.” We leverage these tools to provide deep insight on factors driving growth and how to accelerate sustainable growth, honed through years of developing similar products at major tech and finance players like Lyft, Yahoo, Facebook, and Bridgewater Associates.   Our team uses these tools to measure quantitative product-market fit, so we can more effectively assess and accelerate what Tribe refers to as “N-of-1” companies - companies with the potential to be 10-100x growth opportunities, while minimizing loss ratio by a large degree.  Tribe Capital has $1.6 billion in assets under management and has made notable investments in Apollo.io, Carta, Docker, Kraken, Instabase, Relativity Space, and Shiprocket.

Tribe Capital

Dreamers VC they invest in early stage companies through the application of emerging technology in seed, A, or B rounds.

Dreamers VC

Invus Opportunities is a sister fund to The Invus Group, an equity investment firm founded in 1985 with over $8 billion of evergreen capital. Invus Opportunities is focused on partnering with market-leading management teams and investors in private transactions globally. With a differentiated heritage and capital base, Invus Opportunities brings a complementary dimension to growing companies and investor groups seeking to create lasting value. Invus Opportunities both leads rounds of financing and co-invests in syndicated financings, and currently manages over $1.5 billion.

Invus Opportunities

Aditum Ventures, part of DIFC-based Aditum Investment Management, invests in global early-stage technology companies in fintech and B2B software. The Firm has an early-stage focus for the MENA region (PreSeed to Series A) and a growth capital mandate for Global investments (Series A+).

Aditum Ventures

Kombo Ventures operates as a hybrid between a talent management firm, an IP and brand incubation studio, and a digital agency. In addition, Kombo Ventures actively invests in early-to-mid stage startups. It was founded in 2012 and based in Los Angeles, California.

Kombo Ventures

SquareOne Capital is a Miami-based venture capital firm founded in 2018 by Michel Goguikian. Since then, we have been building a balanced phased portfolio of over 35 companies and are actively adding to it additional investments, we invest in select industries and services that by leveraging technology and refining the drivers of their success are capable of fundamentally changing entire industries. SquareOne Capital's portfolio consists of investments in over 35 companies in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the United States. Our team is located in the regions where we have the largest investments, United States: Miami, Europe: Spain, and Latin America: Venezuela. We invest from SquareOne to IPO. Having a balanced portfolio strategy in stages allows us to continuously support our founders with follow-on investments, as well as reinvest exit proceeds into new opportunities. With special emphasis on social inclusion, our interest lies in industries and services that are on the cusp of disruption, particularly in Fintech.

SquareOne Capital

TRAC is a quantitative venture capital firm that uses collective intelligence, data, math, and common sense to identify future unicorns. Generally, TRAC invests in the 2nd or 3rd round of targeted startups. The firm was founded in 2020 in Sonoma, California.

TRAC

Rain

Rain is a fast-growing early wage access and financial wellness benefit vendor globally. With operations in the U.S., Brazil, and India, Rain provides a voluntary employee benefit that is free for employers to implement. Rain integrates with payroll and timekeeping vendors to create a seamless process with almost zero work for the employer.  Through Rain, not only can employees access their pay any day of the week (instead of waiting the traditional two weeks for payday), but they can also take advantage of a free pay card, the ability to instantly access tips after a shift, and other financial wellness tools such as a credit score builder and financial literacy materials. Rain also can offer deep discounts on dozens of other voluntary benefits such as prescriptions and dental care. Employers win by having one of the leading employee benefits that workers are asking for and by seeing reductions in turnover and increases in job applications.

Rain operates a financial wellness platform that integrates with employers’ payroll and timekeeping software to provide financial support services such as payday loans and income steaming. The platform offers its services free to employers who provide financial wellness benefits for their employees as a voluntary benefit. As of end 2023, Rain has surpassed the milestone of USD 1 billion in earned wage payments and onboarded 1.7 million employees during the year.

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

Rain operates a financial wellness platform that integrates with employers’ payroll and timekeeping software to provide financial support services such as payday loans and income steaming. The platform offers its services free to employers who provide financial wellness benefits for their employees as a voluntary benefit. As of end 2023, Rain has surpassed the milestone of USD 1 billion in earned wage payments and onboarded 1.7 million employees during the year.Funding and financialsIn February 2024, Rain raised USD 300 million <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27208">debt financing</a> from Clear Haven Capital Management. The company plans to use the new capital to service its growing customer base.Previously, in March 2023, Rain raised USD 116 million in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17237">Series A funding</a> comprising USD 66 million in equity capital and USD 50 million in debt, led by QED Investors and Invus Opportunities. The company planned to use the funds to improve its platform and broaden its product offering, including allowing employers to offer employees this with earned wage access (EWA).

Based in the UK, Salary Finance partners with employers to provide a platform for staff to access a range of financial wellbeing products such as early access to earned wages, obtain lower cost borrowing-backed by the user’s salaries, resources for customized financial education, and tools for employees to build and automate savings. The US operations of Salary Finance merged with US financial wellness benefit platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/609722">Finfit </a>in April 2023, and a combined platform under the Finfit brand is planned to be offered to US customers.As of February 2024, the platform was used by 600 employers across the UK, available to more than 4.5 million employees. These include more than a fifth of the companies in the FTSE-100 index. Salary Finance partnered with the American financial technology company Chime in July 2021, to launch Save—a new product to incentivize US employees to set up a salary-linked savings account with Chime, and become entitled to a USD 50 bonus and a variable Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 0.50%.In March 2021, Salary Finance secured a USD 150 million investment from Community Investment Management (CIM). The investment will be in the form of debt funding that will be disbursed to Salary Finance over a period of three years. The company will utilize this investment to fund low-cost loans for its users.

Salary Finance

PayActiv provides a holistic financial wellness solution, with its core offering being “Earned-Wage Access” where employees can get early access to their wages before payday. The company’s platform also includes additional features such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning based tools for budgeting, tracking savings, managing spending and bills, and obtaining personalized one-on-one financial coaching from trained professionals. As of November 2023, PayActiv’s platform was used by employees at over 4,000 businesses from industries such as retail and food services across the US, with some customers in Canada, Australia, Philippines and Brazil. Its clients include Walmart, Wayfair, Ibex Global and several others. The company also has working partnerships with payment processors such as Finserv and Visa to enable real-time transfer of earned wages to bank accounts of employees. It also entered into partnership with U.S. Bank in February 2022, where users of prepaid U.S. Bank Focus Cards for payroll will be able to access their wages early. In August 2020, PayActiv raised USD 100 million in Series C funding, led by Eldridge with participation from existing shareholders Generation Partners and Ziegler LinkAge Fund. The company expects to use this funding to accelerate growth.

PayActiv

Based In the UK, Wagestream provides a financial wellness platform that includes tools to track earnings and expenses, access earned wages prior to payday, and resources to obtain personalized financial education. Wagestream’s tools are offered to employees through a mobile app, with an analytics platform for employers to monitor participation and financial resilience of staff.Employees can access their earned wages using the app by paying a flat fee of GBP 1.75 (USD 2.40) per withdrawal. The company’s platform has integrations with several payroll and timekeeping systems, enabling organizations to deploy Wagestream into their payroll process.As of February 2024, Wagestream had a global user base of more than 3 million, which included more than 1,000 corporate customers in industries such as the retail, hospitality, and healthcare sectors. The company has offices in the US, UK, Spain, and Australia and some notable employers include Burger King, Pizza Hut, Crate &amp; Barrel, Bupa, University of Chicago, Popeyes, and National Health Service UK.Wagestream acquired 1) Australian earned-wage access startup Earnd in March 2021 to enter into the Australian market. 2) a credit card startup Keebos, in October 2023, to integrate Keebos credit score building platform ( that uses open banking data) with Wagestream’s core offerings. The company also partnered with French Insuretch provider Wakam in August 2023, to introduce income protection coverage to its users. In April 2022, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9788?industryIds=43">raised USD 175 million</a> in a Series C funding round. The investment consisted of USD 60 million in equity led by Smash Capital and USD 115 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank. The funds were expected to be utilized to develop new product features such as insurance, lending, and budgeting for its financial wellbeing app and to expand its presence in new markets such as the US by extending support to 30 million frontline workers.

Wagestream

Based in the UK, Cleo offers an application that includes tools for budgeting, and provides personalized spending and savings advice by connecting to a user's bank account and applying machine learning algorithms to analyze spending habits and transaction history. The app also provides access to an interactive chatbot which users can query to obtain on-demand suggestions (which has been supported by an in-house large language mode since 2023). Cleo offers a base version of its app for free, with paid tiers at USD 5.99/per month and 14.99, respectively. The latter includes additional features such as a secured card to build credit score, direct debits, and salary advances. Despite its UK origins, the company ceased operations in the UK in 2022 and focused exclusively on the US market since then. Funding and financialsCleo’s target market is the Gen-Z segment of the population and as of October 2023, the company had 7 million users, (up from 4 million in December 2020) and had USD 72.3 million annual recurring revenue (which was up 2.4x YoY).In June 2022, Cleo <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11188">raised USD 80 million</a> in a funding round led by Brussels-listed tech investor Sofina at a USD 500 million valuation, bringing the total funding raised to nearly USD 137 million. The company expected to utilize the funds to expand its services and employee headcount of 140 to 220 by 2022.

Cleo

FinFit offers a financial wellness benefit platform for employers that uses predictive AI, and includes tools for employees to budget, track spending, set savings goals and obtain personalized financial assessments. The platform also provides access to certified financial counselors to obtain one-on-one financial advice. In addition to financial coaching, the company also offers services such as tools to manage student loan debt, get early access to earned wages, and obtain low-cost short-term loans backed by the employee’s salary. In April 2023, FinFit merged with the US operations of UK-based financial wellness platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/342361">Salary Finance</a>. The two companies aim to launch a combined platform in the US under the Finfit brand.As of March 2024, FinFit was reported to be serving more than 500,000 employees (up from 150,000 in 2020).FinFit’s last funding round was in July 2019, where it raised USD 7 million in Series B funding led by Galaxy Investment Partners. The company expected to channel the funding towards accelerating growth.

FinFit

Operates a B2B SaaS model to support employers with offering various fringe benefits to employees

Provides a platform for employers to offer its employees an alternative to payday loans. Can either be early access to wages already earned or emergency access to interest-free funds which are settled through the paycheck.

Rain

Financial Wellness Tools

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EDGE Insights

FinTech (Q1 2024): Funding dip continues despite Coinbase’s large debt round; InsurTech adopting AI rapidly

Recent Updates

Marqeta announces partnership with Rain to launch Rain Card

Marqeta announces partnership with Rain to launch Rain Card

Rain secures USD 300 million via credit facility to expand product offerings

Rain raises USD 116 million in Series A funding

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