Airalo, which offers affordable eSIM roaming packages for travelers, raised a $60M Series B led by e& Capital at a $280M post-money valuation
Context & Ripple Effects
Airalo's $60M Series B closed with a reporting quirk: TechCrunch filed the round twice within a day, first at a $250M post-money and then at $280M, so the headline figure sits on a moving baseline. The lead investor, e& Capital, ties the round to a carrier group whose own roaming economics eSIM resale quietly undercuts.
What makes this round worth tracking is where it landed: two years later Airalo raised $220M at a $1B-plus valuation, turning this Series B into the midpoint of a steep revaluation curve. It also fits a broader capital pattern in travel software, where Flyr has pulled roughly $500M total across equity and debt.
First-order effects
- e& Capital converts a carrier-affiliated balance sheet into equity in a business that sells travelers an alternative to carrier roaming plans, while Airalo gets the capital to widen its eSIM package inventory and traveler acquisition.
Second-order effects
- Mobile operators lose high-margin roaming revenue as more travelers buy destination eSIMs in-app rather than accept their home carrier's rates, forcing pricing responses from the very telecom groups investing adjacent to the category.
- Investors treating travel infrastructure as a fundable stack — Flyr's $225M equity plus $70M debt round being the parallel case — raises the capital bar for any startup selling software or connectivity into airlines and travel retail.
Third-order effects
- If the arc from this round to the 2025 unicorn financing holds, eSIM distribution consolidates around a few well-capitalized marketplaces that become the default connectivity layer in travel booking, structurally repricing international roaming rather than just discounting it.
The trend: Travel-adjacent infrastructure startups — eSIM resale, airline pricing intelligence — are compounding through successive mega-rounds from niche tools toward platform-scale valuations.