Airwallex secures $497m to reward staff, targets first-ever annual profit
Airwallex has defied the tech downturn with a massive funding round, sending its value soaring to $12.1bn, with the company set to reward long-serving employees and plot an IPO.
Payments unicorn Airwallex has raised $US330m ($497.49m) from investors, sending its valuation soaring at a time when the worth of other tech companies has stalled or reversed, paving the way for a public listing as early as next year.
Founded at a cafe in Melbourne a decade ago, Airwallex’s valuation has surged 30 per cent to $US8bn – up from $6.2bn when it completed a previous raising in May.
It has attracted new backing from investors including Addition, T. Rowe Price Associates, and Activant, with the raising also set to reward long-serving employee shareholders via buyback program.
The valuation increase reflects a period of explosive operational growth, with annualised revenue surpassing $US1bn – up about 90 per cent year on year. The company has also struck commercial partnerships, including launching its Yield product with Qantas’s Business Rewards customers amid a broader global expansion.
Airwallex co-founder Lucy Liu attributed the successful round not to a sudden shift in business strategy but to the firm’s sustained, reliable delivery of financial performance.
She said investors were drawn to the company’s reliability in a volatile market. “Basically, I think the investors just saw that we can consistently deliver, as opposed to just having like a one good year. That’s sort of what really stood out,” Ms Liu said.
“And also our growth in the newer markets that we are entering. Specifically, like the US, Europe, which is more recent for us, and ANZ, has been growing really quickly as well.”
Perhaps more significantly than the valuation jump, Ms Liu said Airwallex was set to achieve its maiden profit this year – a rare feat for a venture-backed tech firm currently investing heavily in global expansion and new product development.
“We are expecting to close this year profitable, and I think next year we’ll have a pretty good EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.”
Ms Liu said the path to profit was a deliberate strategic choice rather than a necessity, highlighting that the company had been cashflow-positive for some time. “Profitability is for us by choice. We just want to keep the balance between investment, scaling, and profitability.”
Ms Liu said the company’s plans for an public listing remained unchanged: “2026 is still the target for IPO readiness and beyond that, it’s just really very market dependent. The market is quite volatile at the moment, so we don’t have any timeline. Nothing has changed.”
Ms Liu said a significant portion of the $US330m raised would be directed towards rewarding the company’s longest-serving stakeholders. Specifically, she said $US160m – nearly half of the total raise – was allocated for a share buyback program aimed at both long-tenured employees and early-stage investors. This decision was presented as a deliberate move to provide liquidity and reward loyalty in a competitive talent market.
“For us, it’s really also to sort of give our employees a chance to have some buybacks,” Ms Liu said.
She said the buyback serves as a crucial mechanism to offer a cash-out opportunity to employees, a benefit usually reserved for publicly listed companies.
The funding will fuel the company’s ambitious road map for intelligent financial operations, including the development of specialised artificial intelligence-powered agents.
Ms Liu said the company was building a “fully autonomous finance department” that could handle the majority of a corporate finance department’s tasks.
“I do think three to five (years) is very realistic,” Ms Liu said of the goal. “We’re releasing it bit by bit through different product lines. Our first AI agents in spend management are already live.”
Despite the massive scope of automation, Ms Liu dismissed concerns that AI would eliminate the chief financial officer roles. “I do think that AI itself, it’s not going to replace any CFO. It’s not really to replace the function, but to help people perform better, and it just means their job will be different,” she said.
“It doesn’t mean that all the CFOs will be out of employment. It’s just what they do day to day is going to be very different.”
Instead, she said the AI-driven approach was designed to democratise sophisticated finance management, particularly for smaller organisations. “I think it’s really to give start-up founders and also early-stage companies the ability to really focus on their business, as opposed to getting pulled back by these finance functions that are really slowing them down.”
In conjunction with the funding, Airwallex announced a strategic shift, establishing San Francisco as a dual global headquarters alongside Singapore. The move is central to its plan to deploy over $US1bn in 2026-29 to scale its US operations, doubling its American headcount to more than 400 employees next year.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout