A small business financing platform co-founded by a Goldman Sachs alumnus will this week unveil an $80m (£61m) funding boost as it seeks to expand its international presence.
Sky News understands that SAPI has secured $75m in debt financing and $5m of equity in a round led by Hudson Cove, a US-based alternative credit asset manager.
Co-founded by Mai Le, formerly of Goldman Sachs, and Alexis van Lennep, who used to work for AlixPartners, SAPI has advanced tens of millions of pounds to small businesses, the vast majority of which are either immigrant- or female-owned.
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It aims to address the decline in smaller British businesses able to access external funding through so-called embedded finance, which the consultancy firm McKinsey predicts could exceed Euros 100bn by 2030.
SAPI’s new funding round has also been backed by existing investors Triple A Capital and Passion Capital.
“Having the right backer at the right time can fundamentally change someone’s life and the trajectory of the business they’ve started,” Ms Le said.
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“This funding round lets us scale payment-linked financing that repays at source and reaches more business owners who are too often overlooked by traditional lenders.”
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“Too often, start-ups and small companies, frequently founded by women or immigrants, are denied credit at a crucial moment in their journey.”
In addition to its London office, SAPI has a presence in Hanoi, having recently established a financial technology entity in Vietnam to accelerate growth across Asia-Pacific markets.
Founded in 2020, SAPI stands for Securities Application Programming Interface.
