Exclusive | Airwallex Raises Another $330 Million, Hits $8 Billion Valuation Today

"The saved and the saviors." By Qian Ren

Edited by Zhiyan Chen

In just six months, Airwallex has closed another funding round.

"An Yong Waves" has learned exclusively that the Series G raised $330 million at an $8 billion valuation — up nearly 30% from the previous round. Addition led the round, with participation from T. Rowe Price, Activant, Lingotto, Robinhood Ventures, and TIAA Ventures, among other Western institutions.

Looking at the investor lineup, this round will accelerate Airwallex's expansion in the U.S. and other key global markets. Addition founder Lee Fixel, formerly a partner at Tiger Global, specializes in tech and financial services investing, with a focus on technical moats and scalability potential; his earlier bets include Facebook, LinkedIn, and Spotify. T. Rowe Price is a storied American asset manager known for long-term capital appreciation strategies. Lingotto is backed by Italy's Agnelli family and served as a cornerstone investor in CATL's Hong Kong secondary listing; its philosophy is "finding a few great companies."

According to "An Yong Waves," the "seamless" completion of the Series G rests on a set of numbers: by October 2025, Airwallex's annualized revenue crossed $1 billion, up 90% year-over-year; annualized transaction volume doubled to exceed $235 billion; it now holds 80 licenses and permits globally, supporting businesses in over 200 countries and regions; it serves more than 200,000 clients, with Q3 customer acquisition running twice as fast as at the start of the year.

Another piece of news: Airwallex is establishing a second global headquarters in San Francisco, deploying core product, engineering, strategic partnership, and marketing teams to the world's hub for AI innovation and talent. Over the next year, it plans to double its U.S. team to over 400. Between 2026 and 2029, it expects to invest more than $1 billion in strategic U.S. market initiatives.

Airwallex's core customers are global enterprises that need to open accounts across dozens of jurisdictions, manage receivables and payables, and run global treasury operations. In a sense, these plans can be understood as its bid to take a seat at the main table of global financial competition. "An Yong Waves" has learned that just a few years ago, North America and Europe contributed zero to Airwallex's revenue; today the figure is close to 40%.**

What started ten years ago as a small company born in a Melbourne coffee shop has clearly become one of the world's most closely watched fintech unicorns, now just one step away from an IPO.

Airwallex's success is a victory for a group of irrational people, and a gamble between engineers and the global financial system. "Reason told me I shouldn't have persisted; but intuition told me that if we didn't do it, global finance would never change in the direction we envisioned," founder Jack once wrote in an internal letter.

But little known is that it nearly died three times, was turned away countless times, was "betrayed" by capital even as it was saved by it. The essence of the disagreement among investors — those who got in and those who missed out — came down to uncertainty about the big dream and judgment about "what makes the best founder." After all, Airwallex was telling a grand story about "rebuilding global financial infrastructure," which in the era of traditional SWIFT clearing was no less than "an ant trying to shake a tree."

Looking back at Airwallex's funding history is like watching a sweeping drama series. In this series, who were the investors that truly "saved" it? The answer: those who chose to "believe one more time" at the critical moment.

Part 01

Angel Descends: Where All Trust Began

In Airwallex's funding history, nearly every round had a "firefighter." But the story begins with a 25-year-old girl.

In 2015, Lucy Liu, who had just left investment banking and was on sabbatical, went to visit University of Melbourne alumnus Max Li, and also met Jack Zhang, another alumnus who was running a coffee shop with Max at the time.

Before this, Jack had majored in computer science at the University of Melbourne. After graduating, he first worked as an engineer at an insurance company, developing derivatives trading algorithms on the side. Later he became an engineer at National Australia Bank, while running an export trading business and dabbling in real estate, managing projects worth tens of millions of Australian dollars.

He made money but wasn't happy. He loved writing code and craved using technology to create greater impact.

During a casual chat at the coffee shop, Jack and Max brought up the inefficiency and high costs of cross-border payments, envisioning a fintech platform that could fundamentally transform international financial rules.

Everyone agreed this was a problem many businesses faced, and a good entrepreneurial opportunity — building a leaner, more transparent, more cost-effective cross-border payment solution for companies.

Lucy was very interested in the idea. The next day she met Jack at the University of Melbourne library and decided on the spot to invest $1 million. The day after that, $1 million hit Jack's account — no contract, no terms, just a confirmation email, in exchange for 20% equity.

After the $1 million raise, Jack promptly quit his job as a foreign exchange trading engineer. The team moved into a 10-square-meter office, coding for more than ten hours a day, sleeping in sleeping bags when exhausted, launching this long entrepreneurial journey.

This trust was nearly insane at the time. Lucy wasn't just an angel investor; she later became a co-founder of Airwallex, initially serving as COO responsible for operations and brand building, and becoming president in 2018. From today's $8 billion valuation perspective, this truly deserves to be called a "staggering return" investment.

Part 02

Capital's First Lesson: The Pulled Term Sheet and Lifeline Money

By 2015, Jack was still out pitching "rebuilding the cross-border settlement network." Most Australian VCs thought he was crazy. Only one top Chinese VC extended an olive branch, signing a lead term sheet at a post-money valuation of $10 million. The team excitedly terminated other negotiations.

But in less than a week, the other side reneged, citing that "the algorithm didn't have enough of a moat." Jack experienced the cruelty of capital markets for the first time. At that point, Airwallex had almost nothing left in its account and was on the brink of death.

With no other choice, he returned to the negotiating table and found Gobi Partners, signing a new term sheet for a $2 million investment. Gobi's condition: show us the product MVP (minimum viable product) first, then we'll transfer the money.

The founding team coded day and night in their 10-square-meter office, building a cross-border transfer demo version in just a few weeks, which finally secured Gobi's "lifeline money." Gobi Partners' managing partner once noted that one key factor in their early investment in Airwallex was "team execution capability," saying "the team responded quickly to requirements and completed the cross-border payment prototype within the agreed timeframe, which convinced us they could translate business ideas into actual products."

It should be noted that it's hard to say what consequences the missed opportunity brought to that famous top VC known for its "wolf pack" approach. After all, in 2016, with mobile internet surging forward, there were indeed more big names to choose from. But the result of this fateful misalignment was: from a returns perspective, Gobi Partners, which entered at the angel round, had the opportunity to achieve returns approaching 1,000x.

The irony is that the three major Australian VCs who initially rejected Airwallex — who wouldn't even meet him, dismissing him with a single email — later made substantial bets at a $6.2 billion valuation, becoming Airwallex shareholders at a steep premium.

Part 03

Series A Shock: Hongshan and Tencent's Double Entry

Developing cross-border payment products and accessing interbank markets was just the first step in Airwallex's construction of global financial infrastructure. As business expanded, a greater crisis quietly approached.

In early 2017, Airwallex's cash on hand could only support two more months, forcing it to launch a Series A round — negotiating simultaneously with Hongshan and Tencent. Hongshan was willing to invest, but with a condition: Tencent had to come in alongside.

The problem was, Tencent was internally divided. Founder Pony Ma felt Tencent could build something similar itself, an opinion that garnered internal support. Some also said investing in Airwallex was "reinventing the wheel," that "a small company can't do global settlement."

In the stalemate, Jack turned his gaze to Tencent Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell. A Goldman Sachs alumnus, Mitchell had driven PayPal's IPO and global expansion, and since 2011 had led Tencent's strategic planning and M&A, deeply understanding how financial systems operated. More critically, Jack sensed that Tencent's fintech layout was strategic — at the time, Tencent already had its hands in numerous mainstream overseas fintech companies, most notably Brazil's Nubank.

On January 5, 2017, he secured a meeting with James at Tencent headquarters. It was probably the most important day of Jack's life, and he nearly blew it: the night before, he'd been up until 3 a.m. at his hotel rewriting code, and during the product demo the next day, the system threw up a "404 Error." The entire scene was suffocating, but James was still moved by the vision and convinced Pony Ma. The next day, Tencent greenlit the investment, and Hongshan and MasterCard followed suit. This was also MasterCard's first startup investment in Australia, an important step in its global fintech layout.

Airwallex's contact with Hongshan actually predated the Series A.

In November 2016, through Gobi's introduction, Airwallex met Hongshan partner Ji Yue. The two sides talked for over an hour in Beijing, and later Ji traveled to Australia for due diligence. At the time, Airwallex had just started out. Though it held some licenses, it didn't cover or connect to many countries, and the numbers weren't impressive. But Hongshan still decided to become one of the Series A investors. Hongshan would go on to back Airwallex in nine consecutive funding rounds.

Both Tencent and MasterCard had actually done payments before and knew where the pain points and difficulties lay. But even so, both investors still conducted six months of due diligence. Ultimately, the $13 million round closed, and Airwallex came back from the dead once more.

Part 04

Hongshan: Bringing in the Critical Friend Circle

The Series A can be seen as a milestone for the early stage. It brought three "critical relationships": deep-pocketed Tencent helped open the door to Asia and global markets; Hongshan provided backing for international reputation; and international payments giant MasterCard greatly expanded the upstream and downstream ecosystem.

It also meant that for other VC/PEs still wanting to board this "high-speed train," this was the last chance to get on.

On the business side, in 2018 Airwallex's transaction volume suddenly exploded, skyrocketing from $1 million to $3.6 billion in nine months, transforming it into a red-hot early-stage project.

Two variables drove this behind the scenes: the rapid rollout of global financial infrastructure, and seizing the opportunity of the cross-border e-commerce boom and upgrading payment needs. By year-end, Airwallex had 100 clients, all massive enterprises — SHEIN alone was at the $20 million per transaction level.

With business in full explosion, more institutions came knocking, and Airwallex thus began a rapid fundraising pace — in June 2018, it closed an $80 million Series B led by Tencent and Hongshan, with Hillhouse Capital, Horizons Ventures, and others participating; five months later, it announced a $100 million Series C led by DST Global, officially joining the global unicorn ranks.

Notably, in subsequent rounds, beyond Hongshan continuing to invest itself, it also brought in multiple international friends, most importantly DST and Hedosophia.

Airwallex management called Hongshan the "strongest FA." From the Series C onward, Hongshan founding and managing partner Neil Shen also participated heavily. In absolute dollar terms, Hongshan and Tencent were the biggest winners.

Part 05

Rejecting Acquisition: A Fork in the Road, All In

Also in 2018, Airwallex faced a sky-high temptation: global payments giant Stripe came with an offer to acquire it for $1.2 billion. At the time, the company had been around for only three years, and had only started processing transactions a year prior — this stirred waves in Jack's heart.

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison personally flew to Shanghai for dinner with Jack. The two even drafted a 20-page cooperation plan in Google Sheets, discovering their visions were highly aligned: building the AWS of finance. At the time, Stripe lacked a global clearing network, and Airwallex didn't have Stripe's acquiring products; both wanted to enter each other's territory.

Facing an olive branch from the world's best fintech company, it was a difficult decision. Jack once confided, "I was extremely torn. Were we just going to retire? But I was 33; life was just beginning. I didn't care about money; I cared about happiness." The team voted, and 90% opposed the sale. Among management, only one person supported selling, and that person was later poached by Stripe.

The rejection of acquisition was also because of something Patrick had said — that he would spend his life building Stripe to increase the internet's GDP. Jack also made up his mind to make Airwallex the infrastructure for global banking.

This decision was truly all-in: if not allies, then opponents. But precisely because of this, Airwallex began shifting from a single product to multiple products: embedded finance, acquiring, billing management, treasury management, expense management, and more, while expanding from pan-Asia outward to European, American, and emerging markets — thus carving out another path.

DST, Hedosophia, et al.: The Coldest Winter and the Hottest Bet Part of the confidence to reject the acquisition also came from the support of DST Global founder Yuri Milner.

During a three-hour conversation with Jack, Yuri didn't ask about the business model, only about childhood experiences, how he'd survived in a foreign land, and other life stories. That same day, DST gave a verbal commitment to lead the $100 million Series C, with no board seat required, at a valuation 10% higher than existing shareholders, with very flexible terms. Both sides signed the term sheet on the spot.

But new product development and commercialization required massive capital investment. At the end of 2019, Airwallex blindly entered Europe, and without deeply understanding local customer needs or having product-market fit, operating costs soared to the point where the capital chain nearly snapped.

Some context: early on, Jack insisted on personally hiring the first 100 employees, but encountered cultural conflicts when bringing in executives with banking backgrounds; this batch of executives later all left, and the company once again fell into a critical moment. The Series C money was quickly running out.

With no choice, Jack flew to London hoping to talk to SoftBank, but during their due diligence, the WeWork crisis hit, and the financing fell through. At this point, DST and Tencent cobbled together a convertible note, and later Hongshan helped introduce European fund Hedosophia.

In the week of signing in April 2020, the pandemic was at its worst, U.S. stocks were falling for multiple consecutive days, and because much business came from travel, Airwallex's revenue dropped by nearly a third. But the $160 million Series D still closed smoothly, half converted from the original convertible note, half led by Hedosophia. Unexpectedly, in 2020 Airwallex generated over $20 million in revenue, double the previous year.

This was another watershed. In 2021, Airwallex's business evolved from "global financial infrastructure" to "next-generation global banking platform," and revenue more than doubled again. New products also started generating revenue from 2022.

After this, the fundraising pace clearly accelerated. In March 2021, Greenoaks led a $100 million round; in September and November, it completed two rounds (Series E and E1) led by Lone Pine Capital totaling $300 million, with valuation rising from $2.6 billion to $5.5 billion.

In 2022, though valuation stayed flat, it still completed a Series E2. Existing investors Square Peg, Salesforce Ventures, Hongshan, Lone Pine Capital, 1835i, and Tencent participated, while also bringing in Australian superannuation fund HostPlus and a large North American pension fund as new shareholders.

Airwallex achieved profitability in 2023. And from 2015 to 2023, its annual growth rate never fell below 100%. After that, there were no more moments in its development that could truly be called crises.

At this moment, looking back from the threshold of IPO: whether it was Lucy Liu's $1 million without any terms, or Hongshan and Tencent's entry at the darkest moments, or Jack's all-in rejection of the Stripe acquisition — these critical turning points, viewed at the time, often carried a certain "irrational" fervor.

But this is precisely where the business world fascinates: there are entrepreneurs obsessed with the big dream, and investors who chose to believe it at the critical instant. All rational calculation can only derive the extreme of the present; only those seemingly crazy intuitions and trusts can push open the door to the future.

Layout by Nan Yao | Images by IC Photo

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