P2P Lending Site Funding Circle Raises $150M Led By DST At A $1B+ Valuation
Time to make way for another startup juggernaut out of the financial world. Funding Circle — a London-based peer-to-peer platform for small businesses to get loans, and investors to put up money to finance those loans …
Context & Ripple Effects
In April 2015, Funding Circle — the London-based marketplace where investors fund loans to small businesses — took a $150M round led by DST at a $1B+ valuation, putting it in the unicorn club while still a young platform. The related coverage traces what came after: a further $100M round led by Accel in early 2017, then plans announced in September 2018 to list on the London Stock Exchange.
The raise also landed in a crowded lane. Within months, rival small-business lender Fundbox pulled in $50M from Spark Capital Growth, and crowdfunding platforms like CircleUp were raising both corporate and fund capital — evidence that investor money was piling into alternatives to bank lending for small companies.
First-order effects
- DST's $150M at a $1B+ valuation gives Funding Circle the war chest to scale its two-sided marketplace — more capital for investors to deploy against UK small-business loan demand.
Second-order effects
- Competing small-business lenders felt the funding bar rise almost immediately: Fundbox's $50M Spark Capital Growth round followed within five months, as capital chased the same underserved borrower base.
- Follow-on backers validated the thesis rather than fading it — Accel's $100M round in January 2017 kept the growth trajectory funded through to a liquidity event.
Third-order effects
- The pattern held all the way through: by September 2018 Funding Circle announced plans to float on the London Stock Exchange, targeting roughly $387M — turning peer-to-peer lending from a venture bet into public-market infrastructure.
- For London, a homegrown P2P lender choosing an LSE flotation reinforces the city's role as the natural listing venue for European alternative-finance platforms, not just their birthplace.
The trend: Peer-to-peer lending platforms are scaling along a repeatable arc from venture-backed unicorn rounds to public listings, with the London Stock Exchange emerging as the venue where that arc completes.