2018 Fin-Tech Fundraising Round-up: Chinese Companies Raised 83% of the Capital
In the first half of 2018, China’s fin-tech enterprises raised around 230 billion yuan ($35 billion), over 80 percent of the global total, and three giants took more than half of the amount fundraised in China.
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According to data from 01caijing.com, a website focused on reporting about fin-tech, at least 569 fin-tech investment and fundraises took place globally in the first six months of this year, involving a total of about 276 billion yuan, almost twice that of 2017 and a year-on-year increase of 346.3 percent.
Three fin-tech giants – Ant Financial, Du Xiaoman Financial and JD Finance (which are the financial arms of Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com Inc. respectively) – have raised about 120 billion yuan in total, more than half of the total Chinese domestic financing.
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Looking at all the rounds of financing around the world, top eight ranked by amount raised are all Chinese companies. Ant Financial’s pre-IPO round ranked first, obtaining a total of $14 billion. Also on the list are JD Finance and Du Xiaoman Finance, which acquired $2 billion and $1.9 billion of strategic investment respectively.
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Global fin-tech financing
On a global scale, there have been 569 known fin-tech fundraises since the start of 2018, with a total amount raised at around 276 billion yuan. The amount in the month of June along was as high as 116.1 billion yuan, the highest amount in a month since 2016.
Most of the global fin-tech fundraises in the first half of 2018 took place in China, the United States, and India. Among them, there were 330 fundraises for Chinese companies accounting for 58 percent of the global total; the United States and India ranked second and third, with 80 and 70 fundraises respectively, followed by Singapore and the United Kingdom with 25 and 16 cases. In terms of amount, Chinese enterprises obtained 230 billion yuan of financing, accounting for 83.3 percent of the global total.
It is also reported that the total global amount raised by fin-tech companies in March and June was as high as 93.6 billion yuan and 116.1 billion yuan respectively. In those two months, the amount raised in China, the United States and India combined accounted for 94.8 percent of the global total.
Blockchain received the most amount of financing
Many Chinese companies registered with “blockchain” in their names in the past several months this year, almost sixfold the number of last year, according to South China Morning Post.
The blockchain field is quite favored by investors, attracting 16.4 billion yuan of investments, as Securities Daily reported.
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In the first half of 2018, at least 222 fundraises took place in the field of blockchain, 80 percent of which took place in the United States or China. 48.2 percent of all the rounds raised in the blockchain industry, or 107 cases to be exact, were in the seed or angel stages.
We can see that although blockchain has attracted the attention of many companies and the inflow of capital, it is still at an early stage of development.
Feature Image Source: Michigan FinTech.
