Bolt Seeks $300M+ In Next Fundraising Round

Bolt Financial Inc., hopes to raise at least $300 million in fresh capital in its next fund-raising round, sources told Bloomberg.

The San Francisco-based startup specializes in technology for online retail checkout and “is eyeing a significantly higher valuation than the roughly $850 million it was valued at in a funding round last year,” the report said, citing anonymous sources familiar with the situation. The target is $3 billion or more, per Bloomberg’s anonymous sources.

Bolt’s confidence in the valuation jump comes from the boom in eCommerce during the COVID-19 pandemic and expectations that shoppers will continue their online shopping habits even after the virus subsides.

Bolt works with retailers, publishers and other online shopping platforms to eliminate the need for a guest checkout option. The technology is popular with retailers because one-click transactions are typically more likely to be completed than those that require the user multiple navigations to complete the purchase.

The money Bolt raises in this round will be used to help the company sign new clients, improve its technology and expand into Europe, according to the Bloomberg report.

Late last year, Bolt closed a funding round with $75 million in a year in which the company processed $1 billion in transactions, according to a report by Venture Beat. That fundraising round put Bolt’s valuation at more than $215 million.

Bolt also added 250,000 new shoppers to its network per month in 2020 on top of a tenfold increase in the size of its shopper network.

According to the Bolt website, Bolt customers don’t have to enter a billing address and the mobile experience is no-scroll and above the fold, with a post-checkout registration model letting customers wait until after checkout to sign up for an account.