Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial closes the world's largest private fundraising round for an Internet company at $4.5B, giving it a roughly $60B valuation
Alibaba Affiliate Ant Financial Raises $4.5 Billion in World's Largest Private Tech Funding Round — China's Ant Financial raises fresh funds at a roughly $60 billion valuation
Context & Ripple Effects
This round caps a fast climb for Ant Financial: it was valued at $45B-$50B in its 2015 fundraising while operating Alipay, and in March 2016 was still targeting a smaller $3.1B raise at a $50B valuation. Closing instead at $4.5B and roughly $60B makes it the largest private tech funding round on record.
The arc continued upward: sources reported Ant preparing a $9B round in April 2018, then closing $10B at a $150B valuation that May — more than double this round's price — while an earnings analysis showed pretax profit of about $1.4B for the year ended March, up 65% year over year.
First-order effects
- Investors in the round take stakes in Alipay's operator at roughly $60B, and Ant Financial gains the war chest to fund expansion beyond payments into broader financial services under Alibaba's umbrella.
Second-order effects
- A record-setting private valuation for a Chinese fintech resets the pricing benchmark for the sector's other fundraisers and strengthens Ant Financial's hand against banks and payment rivals competing for the same users and merchants.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — and the 2018 jump to a $150B valuation suggests it did — China's biggest internet finance firms can keep scaling on private capital at rising valuations rather than rushing to public markets, concentrating the sector around a few affiliate-backed giants.
The trend: China's leading fintech platforms are compounding value through successive record private mega-rounds, deferring IPOs while their valuations multiply between raises.