Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market and the VC industry.
Builders is back with Season 3! In the last episode, I sat down with Nikolay Seleznev, Co-Founder of Uzum. You can find the full episode here on YouTube, or here on Spotify and here on Apple Podcast.
Nikolay started as a very traditional investment banker, at Fx Trader In Mosca first, and then with J.P. Morgan in London and Arthur D. Little later on. But his real passion was entrepreneurship and more specifically fintech, and he found a greenfield of opportunities in Uzbekistan.
He launched Uzum in 2022 along with Djasur Djumaev, and they quickly grew it to be Uzbekistan’s first unicorn after a $70M series A in 2024. Uzum started its journey in Uzbekistan with an e-commerce marketplace called Uzum Market, and shortly after its success, the startup added fintech with a debit card and later expanded into its express food delivery service, Uzum Tezkor.
With him, we talked about the Uzbek fintech market, the challenges of launching a fintech company, but also the main trends in fintech today and where he would start building from scratch.
Coming back to us, I’ve been reading a very interesting study this week. It’s an analysis of the last 400 years of financial bubbles, by Philippe Laffont from Coatue Management, highlighting the parallels with the current AI growth curve and one bold assumption: AI is not a bubble, but an early industrial revolution. Here my main takeaways:
The study from Coatue illustrates how AI-related companies have significantly outperformed the broader market since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. As of October 2025, AI-focused firms within the S&P 500 delivered a remarkable 165% return, compared to 68% for the overall index and only 24% for non-AI companies.
Market valuations have expanded in recent years, they remain far below the extremes of the dot-com era. The Nasdaq 100’s forward P/E multiple reached 89x during the 2000 bubble but stands at around 28x as of October 2025. This indicates that although investor optimism—particularly around AI and tech—has lifted multiples, the current environment reflects more sustainable growth expectations compared to the speculative excesses of the early 2000s.
The comparison shows that today’s largest tech companies trade at far lower valuations than those of the late 1990s. In 1999, the top seven tech firms—such as Cisco, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems—had an average forward P/E ratio of 67x, with peaks above 100x. By contrast, today’s leaders, including Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Broadcom, average a more moderate 28x. This suggests that despite strong investor enthusiasm for technology and AI, current valuations remain grounded in higher profitability and more mature business fundamentals.
The projection indicates that AI ecosystem revenues could surge from $150 billion in 2025 to $1.9 trillion by 2035, driving EBIT from a $20 billion loss to $850 billion in profit. Capital expenditures are expected to grow to $1.7 trillion, while net property, plant, and equipment could reach $4.6 trillion. Return on invested capital (ROIC) is forecast to rise from –3% to +20%, approaching the mature returns seen in AWS and Azure.
Personally, I think this vision is rather optimistic. Even if no one can argue about the impact of the technology itself, valuations and growth are far too similar to other cycles we saw recently, one being fintech valuations between 2016 and 2021. But as always, only time will tell.
Anyway we saw a lot of interesting news this week. Coinbase is in final talks to acquire BVNK for $2B, Revolut launches fee-free conversion with stablecoin, Lovable valuation soars to $5B in the secondary market, Rain is the first fintech to join stablecoin network from Western Union. But also, Ripple acquires Palisade, Ping Identity acquires Keyless, United Fintech acquires Trade Ledger™. Lot of new funds! Emerald Technology Ventures with a $60M closing, United Founders with $80M, and Balnord with $70M. But also new funds from Rubio Impact Ventures, Ventures Platform Fund (very interesting african fund), CMT Digital and Inception Fund. In the italian market, we saw Banca Sella acquiring HYPE for $85M and Satispay launching pay-in-3. And finally, some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Stream, SnapMint, Lettuce Financial, Zynk, Kabilio, Atrya, Reevo, Credix and DealMaker.
But let’s take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days.
Rounds
Affirm secures $750M loan purchase deal with New York Life Insurance Company
Stream raises $4M to modernize business payments across MENA
Snapmint raises $125M Series B to scale EMI-on-UPI offering across India
Lettuce Financial secures $28M and acquires Besolo to expand solopreneur financial platform
Kabilio secures €4M to bring generative AI to accounting firms
Ripple raises $500M at $40B valuation as institutional demand surges
Canaan Inc. secures $72M strategic investment from Brevan Howard, Galaxy Digitals, and Weiss Asset Management
Atrya raises €1.5M to build Europe’s first fully compliant stablecoin payment network
Reevo raises $80M from Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins to redefine GTM operations
Credix secures $90M to scale AI-driven SME credit infrastructure in Brazil
Worldline launches €500M capital raise to fund turnaround and restore growth
Colombian fintech DRUO secures seed funding from Global PayTech Ventures to expand its global direct payments network
DealMaker raises US$20 million to scale retail investing and AI-driven fundraising
Stripe-backed Tempo leads $25 million investment in blockchain startup COMMONWARE
VC funds
Emerald Technology Ventures secures €60M first close for Global Water Fund II
United Founders launches €80M fund to empower Europe’s next generation of deeptech startups
Rubio Impact Ventures secures €70M for Fund III to scale climate and social innovation
Ventures Platform Fund raises $64M for second fund to back Africa’s next generation of startups
CMT Digital raises $136M for fourth crypto venture fund amid market recovery
Balnord launches €70M fund to drive frontier and dual-use tech growth across the Baltics
Inception Fund launches €21M micro fund backed by top Nordic AI founders
News on the market
Coinbase nears $2B acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK
Revolut launches fee-free 1:1 conversions between USD and stablecoins
Pine Labs aims to launch the IPO with a valuation of $2.9B
Lovable soars to $5B valuation in secondary market after reaching $100M ARR
Airwallex reaches $1B in annualized revenue!
Ping Identity acquires Keyless to advance privacy-preserving biometric authentication
J.P. Morgan’s Kinexys launches blockchain platform to streamline fund flows
Turkey’s Central Bank revokes Papara’s license amid illegal betting investigation
ACI Worldwide acquires PaymentComponents to strengthen ACI Connetic Platform
iDEAL to transition into Wero, Europe’s Unified Digital Wallet, from 2026
Ripple acquires UK digital asset and wallet company Palisade
CASHPLUS launches 750M Dirham IPO to accelerate national expansion
Questrade Financial Group secures federal approval to launch digital Questbank in Canada
Invincible Software Holdings (ISH) acquires ProSpend to launch new fintech track and expand across UK & Europe
United Fintech acquires Trade Ledger™ to expand AI-driven commercial banking capabilities
Rain partners with Western Union to bring stablecoin utility to global cash payments
Mastercard and CredibleX partner to expand SME financing access in the UAE
Engine by Starling signs 10-Year deal with Tangerine Bank in landmark North American expansion
Stripe and NEC Corporation partner to launch facial recognition payments
Italian market
Banca Sella acquires full ownership of HYPE in €85M deal to accelerate digital growth
And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:
Events you don’t want to miss
Singapore Fintech Festival | Singapore - 12-14/11/2025 (link here)
Seamless Saudi Arabia | Riyadh - 17-19/11/2025 (link here)
MoneyLIVE Payments | Amsterdam - 19-20/11/2025 (link here)
22nd Bank Management Conference | Athens - 20/11/2025 (link here)
You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.
Startups raising funds
Loyyal - Loyalty platform from the MENA region, with entities in the US and South East Asia, provides a B2B2C platform to handle multiple loyalty programs and earn rewards all over the world. Raising a $6M Series A
Freedhome - Proptech and fintech platform, enabling people to be able to gain profit from real estate by renting them to intermediaries. Raising a $1M seed round
Weagle - B2B Tech startup that provides the very first browser designed for company, with total security for sensitive data. Raising $6 millions for their seed round.
Shoppy Code:Gift card platform that offers a points based loyalty program. They share part of the profits coming from marketing budgets with their customers. Raising $500k.
Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #105.
Wow, the part about the AI growth curve parallel with bubbles really stood out to me. Such a smart observation, makes one wonder about future regulaton in this space.