Spend management platform Ramp raises $300 million, acquires Buyer

Ramp, a New York-based corporate card and spend management platform, raised $300 million in Series C funding at a $3.9 billion valuation led by Founders Fund. It also acquired Buyer, a "negotiation-as-a-service" platform focused on large purchases like annual software contracts.

Why it matters: Ramp tries to differentiate itself from rivals by emphasizing its spend management tools, but venture capitalists aren't taking the thrifty hint.

• This is Ramp's third round of equity funding in the past nine months, with its valuation more than doubling since an April infusion.

The big picture: Other investors include Redpoint Ventures, Thrive Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Spark Capital, Coatue, Iconiq, Altimeter, Stripe, Lux Capital, A* Partners, Definition Capital, Vista Public Strategies, Honeycomb and Kinetic.

The bottom line: "Ramp, founded by [Eric] Glyman and Karim Atiyeh in 2019, is among a new breed of business lenders taking on a sector that hasn't seen much change in decades," CNBC's Hugh Son writes.

• "Like Brex, another young company with an eye-popping valuation (it raised at a $7.4 billion valuation in April), Ramp offers cash-back charge cards and a suite of software tools for business owners."