Jeeves raises $180M from China's Tencent for global corporate card

Corporate card and spend management startup Jeeves announced it raised $180 million in Series C funding led by China's Tencent at a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Why it matters: Jeeves believes its international reach will set it apart for customers with multinational operations, differentiating it from its more provincial peers.

• Other investors in the round include GIC, Stanford University, a16z, CRV, Silicon Valley Bank, FT Partners, Clocktower Ventures, Urban Innovation Fund, Haven Ventures, Gaingels, and Spike Ventures.
• "We can offer [customers] a clearing mechanism for [multiple] cards, local payments, and working capital loans in multiple currencies," CEO Dileep Thazhmon said.
• "That becomes very appealing," he says, "because they don't have to move money back and forth, and they don't have to pay FX fees."

How it works: Jeeves has built a proprietary infrastructure that lets customers make cross-border payments and pay vendors with corporate cards — all without foreign exchange fees or relying on different banks or financial institutions across multiple regions.

• The company has four core products today: a corporate card, B2B payments, working capital loans — which are 30- to 90-day loans in the local currency — and Jeeves Growth, the company's venture debt/revenue financing product.
• "One of the biggest things we sell is this consolidation of all your payments out all your B2B stack into one single platform — versus having four or five different vendors and then having a team to manage all that," Thazhmon says.

Context: Jeeves is hardly alone in this space. Just yesterday, corporate card startup Ramp raised $200 million at an $8.1 billion valuation.

What's next: Today, Jeeves serves companies across 24 countries and 3 continents, including North America, Latin America, and Europe. But with the new funding, Jeeves plans to expand its operations to cover more than 40 countries over the next 3 years.

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