Malt, a freelance marketplace for developers, designers, project managers, and others, raises €80M led by Goldman Sachs, sources say at a €400M valuation
The world of professional services has long relied on contractors to fill in for assignments and projects that might …
Context & Ripple Effects
Malt's 2019 $25M round led by Idinvest was earmarked for expansion into Germany and the Netherlands; the new €80M from Goldman Sachs at a reported €400M valuation is the next step up that ladder, arriving just as the competitive field hardens. LinkedIn has since taken its freelance services marketplace global off a 2M-user US beta, putting a distribution giant directly across Malt's developer, designer and PM supply.
First-order effects
- Malt gets the capital to defend and deepen its European footprint against LinkedIn, Fiverr and Upwork before LinkedIn's newly global marketplace locks in enterprise demand.
- Goldman Sachs leading the round puts institutional balance-sheet money behind a mid-sized European marketplace rather than only the US category leaders.
Second-order effects
- Profitable, low-take-rate challengers like Braintrust — which said it reached profitability on an $18M raise after its seed — force Malt to compete on fees as well as geography, squeezing marketplace take rates across technical talent.
- Staffing-platform peers now price off both ends of the spectrum: Jobandtalent's $103M Series F at a $1.5B valuation, down from $2.35B, shows gig-work multiples compressing even while capital still flows in.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, professional-services freelancing consolidates around a few scaled platforms with enterprise contracts, and standalone European marketplaces face a choice between deeper institutional backing or exit — with Jobandtalent's down round a warning on how quickly platform valuations reprice.
- Bank-led rounds of this kind point toward staffing marketplaces being treated as financeable working-capital businesses, blurring the line between venture-backed software and institutional lending to gig labor supply.
The trend: White-collar freelance marketplaces are consolidating into institutionally financed platforms competing on enterprise distribution and take rates, with valuation discipline tightening after the sector's peak.