European investing app Shares, which launched in the UK two months ago and has 150K+ users, raised $40M led by Valar Ventures, bringing its total raised to $90M
Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures is leading a $40 million financing round into European investing app Shares.
Context & Ripple Effects
This $40M round is a fast top-up: Shares only unveiled its app in March with a $40M Series A that Valar Ventures also led, and the follow-on brings total funding to $90M on the strength of 150K+ users in roughly two months since its UK launch. Valar leading both tranches within months is a doubled-down bet, not a new relationship.
The raise lands in a crowded lane. Days earlier, Lightyear raised $25M to expand into 19 European countries including Germany and France, Bux had raised $80M for commission-free share and ETF investing, and PitchBook data shows US investor participation in European VC climbing from 359 deals in 2011 to over 1,400 by 2021 — the pattern Valar's check exemplifies.
First-order effects
- Shares gains fresh runway to scale its chat-and-invest model beyond its two-month-old UK user base, with Valar Ventures now the controlling financial backer at $90M total raised.
Second-order effects
- Rivals Lightyear and Bux now face a well-funded competitor differentiating on social investing rather than price, forcing their expansion and zero-commission plays to compete against community features instead of just fees.
Third-order effects
- If the funding cadence holds, European retail investing consolidates toward scale — a path the corpus already sketches in Revolut's rise to Europe's most valuable startup at $75B — leaving subscale apps to merge or differentiate narrowly.
The trend: US capital led by Valar Ventures is funding a crowded field of European retail-investing apps, where differentiation is shifting from zero commissions to social and community features.