QED Investors

Fintech VC powerhouse Frank Rotman stepping down from QED Investors to found his own startups

Prolific fintech investor and QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman said Friday that he will transition to a partner emeritus role by year’s end to focus on founding his own startups. But those startups won’t necessarily be financial technology companies. In a post on X, Rotman – who helped start QED in 2007 – declared that […]

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QED leads $11M investment in Nigerian fintech Raenest

As Africa’s tech ecosystem booms, more local talent is landing remote jobs with Big Tech firms and global startups. But getting paid remains a challenge for many of these freelancers and remote workers. They struggle to open accounts that accept US dollars, with foreign employers using incompatible payment platforms, and face slow invoicing and payment

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QED seeds $9.9M in Cedar Money, a stablecoin payment platform

The newest generation of startups aiming to solve cross-border payments are focusing on stablecoins — cryptocurrency coins often pegged to actual currencies or other commodities to help them keep stable prices — to build solutions that work faster and often cheaper than classic financial rails. This trend is also driving a surge in investor interest

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Solar startup Niko is building Mexico’s first virtual power plant

When Edoardo Dellepiane and Raffaele Sertorio founded Niko Energy in 2023, they saw ample opportunity in Mexico’s underdeveloped solar market. Despite the fact that many parts of the country are bathed in sunlight, it has strikingly few solar installations. After more than a year of helping solar installers sell, plan, and finance panels for residential

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Once high-flying proptech startups Divvy Homes and EasyKnock are the latest to struggle

Many proptech startups, born and funded during the low-interest-rate heydays, are in the throes of struggle. With investments into U.S.-based real estate startups falling from $11.1 billion in 2021 to $3.7 billion last year, according to PitchBook data, some are selling themselves off, while others are closing shop. The two most recent examples are the

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XP Health grabs $32M to bring employees more affordable vision care

Antonio Moraes, the grandson of a late prominent Brazilian billionaire, was never interested in joining the family-owned conglomerate of construction companies and a bank. Shortly after graduating from college, he founded one of Brazil’s first impact funds, which invested primarily in companies that made healthcare more accessible and affordable. But while attending Stanford University, where

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Aplazo is using buy-now-pay-later as a stepping stone to financial ubiquity in Mexico

Buy-now-pay-later services have become so ubiquitous that BNPL may as well just be another way to say ‘debt.’ But in Mexico, where BNPL platform Aplazo operates, a large underbanked population makes BNPL more like an alternative to cash. The four-year-old Mexican fintech startup facilitates fractionated payments to offline and online merchants even when the buyer

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