With the latest equity offering attracting $550M in issued debt and $200M in investor issued equity, corporate spending manager Ramp has proceeded to gather an $8.1B valuation.
This investing round was led by Founders Fund, marking its fourth time leading Ramp’s investing rounds. All major backers of Ramp were involved in the transaction as well and included Stripe, D1 Capital Partners, Iconiq Capital, Thrive Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Coatue Management, Iconiq, Altimeter, Stripe, Lux Capital, Vista Public Strategies, Spark Capital and Definition Capital.
Exponential growth for Ramp
Ramp has grown at a pace envied by so many companies. The recovery of businesses since the 2020 pandemic peak saw corporate spending consequently increase. Ramp reported more than 400% spending growth in its corporate accounts in 2020 alone. This consequently saw Ramp seek investors to help bolster its platform and offer a reliable service.
2021 was more than a good year, with Ramp achieving unicorn status at a $1.6B valuation, following a $115M capital raise in April. Its corporate customers were rapidly growing and so was their spending. Less than five months later, Ramp raised an additional $300M in a successful series C, which valued the company at $3.9B, more than doubling its previous valuation.
The growth and investor enthusiasm story hopefully hasn’t come to an end with the most recent capital raise that again more-than-doubled Ramp’s valuation, now at $8.9B. Ramp has raised a net of $1.37B from investors, an impressive achievement.
“It took us over two years to reach 10,000 cumulative cardholders, and now we are adding that many in a month,” commented Eric Glyman, Co-Founder and Ceo, Ramp.
Ramp as an enabler of better corporate spending
New York-based Ramp was founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Gene Lee and Karim Atiyeh. It powers the fastest-growing corporate card in America, enabling billions of dollars of purchases each year. The company enables a broad range of customers from fast-growing start-ups and multibillion-dollar companies, to potato farmers to manage their spending and build sustainable businesses.
By providing the next generation of finance tools, from corporate cards and expense management to bill payments and account integrations, Ramp is actively saving businesses time and money. Ramp claims that by switching to their finance automation platform, businesses can spend an average of 3.3% less and close their books 86% faster.
The corporate spending giant competes with firms like Brex, TeamPay, Divvy, Airbase, Concur, Expensify and Bill.com, which are well funded and capitalized as well. Ramp’s advantage for Finance teams is that they do not have to maintain or update multiple systems. Ramp’s automation extends across multiple forms of payment.
Scaling plans for Ramp
The company acquired negotiation-as-a-service startup Buyer with the goal of helping its customers save money on SaaS contracts. Ramp sought to enhance B2B payments by launching the B2B payments tool Bill Pay, on its platform.
Ramp has also announced its collaboration with Amazon Business, to streamline business purchasing through Ramp’s receipt-matching integration and both companies’ spend controls. This comes after the recent launch of Ramp for travel in partnership with Lyft, WeWork and other leading travel providers.
To support the strong product and customer growth seen recently, Ramp has steadily quadrupled its workforce over the past year. The company also plans to open a new office in the emerging tech hub, Miami, later this year.
“We are pursuing an extraordinary opportunity to overhaul an industry that historically has been misaligned and out-of-touch with the needs of its customers,” remarked Eric Glyman. “Since day one Ramp has been designed to save our customers time and money, which is fueling our rapid growth. We’ve delivered over $135 million in savings for our customers to date. We’re helping companies close their books in eight hours instead of the industry median of eight days – freeing up 3.5 million hours of manual work. None of our competitors can say the same. With this funding, we will continue to help even more businesses manage their money easier, faster, and smarter.”
