Spendesk bags another $18m in extension of Series B round

13 Oct 2020

Spendesk chief executive Rodolphe Ardant. Image: Spendesk

With the latest batch of funding, Spendesk aims to further scale its team to support growth and expand its product offering.

Today (13 October), French fintech business Spendesk announced that it has raised $18m in an extension of its Series B round, which saw $38m raised last year.

This brings Spendesk’s Series B to a total of $56m. To date, the company has raised $68.5m in funding.

The latest investment comes from global VC fund Eight Roads Ventures. The start-up, which has developed a spend management platform for small and medium businesses (SMBs), will use the funding to support its growth and expansion.

According to Spendesk, the start-up has seen strong growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, with accelerated digitisation of finance departments and an increased demand for online spend management tools as employees work from home.

Spendesk’s technology

Spendesk was founded in 2016 by Rodolphe Ardant, Guilhem Bellion and Jordane Giuly within the French start-up studio eFounders. It currently serves 40,000 end-users, with customers including Amboss, Curve, Gousto, Raisin and Wefox.

The start-up has developed spend management software for finance teams and employees that offers flexible payments, approvals, automated receipt capture and real-time spend insights. It also offers virtual and physical debit cards for employees, along with a management dashboard for finance teams.

Ardant, who is CEO of Spendesk, said: “Many companies see inefficiency in dated processes such as shared company credit cards and manual receipt collection, particularly when their teams are working remotely.

“The trend towards greater decentralised spending creates complexity for finance leaders looking to monitor and control this spend, especially at the speed SMBs need to operate. More than ever, finance teams seek visibility and real-time access to accurate data to allow their businesses to manoeuvre safely through these challenging times.”

Two men standing in front of the Spendesk logo.

From left: Chief revenue officer Joseph Smith and chief executive officer Rodolphe Ardant. Image: Spendesk

Recent growth

Since its Series B round in September 2019, the company has opened new offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco. This has helped increase its headcount from 100 to more than 200 in just over a year.

Spendesk, which was named as one to watch in Siliconrepublic.com’s European Start-up 100 at the beginning of the year, aims to use the additional capital to further scale its team to support growth.

The company also plans to expand its product offering to provide budgetary control, spending insights, dashboards and the ability for finance teams to temporarily limit employees from spending further if they haven’t submitted their receipts.

The Paris-headquartered company also revealed that Joseph Smith is joining its executive team as chief revenue officer. Smith has held similar positions at SaaS businesses including Dixa, Qubit and Hootsuite.

Ardant said: “I’m very excited Joseph decided to join Spendesk. With his tremendous experience, he’ll be able to help us take the next steps and stay focused while we scale operations even faster than before.”

Kelly Earley was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com