MONTREAL — SoftBank, one of the world’s largest tech investors, is leading a US$215-million fundraising round for Clearco, the Toronto-based fintech announced Thursday. It marks the first Canadian investment from the Japanese conglomerate’s influential Vision Funds.

The round comes just two months after Clearco raised US$350 million in a Series C that valued the company at nearly US$2 billion, a valuation that has remained unchanged in the months since, the company said. In addition to SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, investors in the equity round included new investors Intuit, Bow Capital and Park West.

“We met SoftBank as we were raising our last round,” said Andrew D’Souza, Clearco’s co-founder and CEO. “Masa [SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son] and his team were incredibly enthusiastic about what we were doing and were like, ‘Look, we’d love to invest; we’d love to extend the round and scale it up,’ and we thought they’d be excellent partners for us in achieving that mission.”

As part of the deal, SoftBank Investment Advisers director Kristin Bannon will join Clearco’s board as an observer, co-founder and president Michele Romanow told The Logic. “Clearco is a market leader who has created an entire industry that is fiercely dedicated to democratizing access to capital and a full suite of services that serve the founder journey,” Bannon said in a statement. The company did not return a phone call requesting further comment. 

Clearco, which uses algorithmic decision-making to allocate investments to e-commerce companies, has grown rapidly this year, increasing its headcount from about 300 earlier this year to nearly 400. The company’s automated process can seed founders with between US$10,000 and US$10 million in capital, which they repay through a revenue-sharing agreement. Clearco says that since its launch, it has deployed over US$2 billion to more than 5,000 businesses in seven countries.

In April, Clearco changed its name from Clearbanc to reflect a growing suite of products, including customized advice that helps founders network with other investors or grow the valuations of their businesses. 

Softbank’s investment in Clearco comes as other major tech investors enter the Canadian startup landscape, which has seen a flurry of deals and high valuations. One of those new players is Tiger Global Management, a New York-based hedge fund with a reputation for moving fast and supporting large valuations, which recently struck a handful of high-profile deals in Canadian startups Xanadu, Dooly and Ada, signalling the company’s entrance to the market.

At the time SoftBank’s original Vision Fund was launched, it was one of the world’s largest tech investment funds, with US$100 billion in assets from contributors including Apple, Qualcomm and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. But SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, announced in 2019, has faced skepticism after its first Vision Fund lost billions of dollars on investments in companies like WeWork and Uber. 

The company failed to reach a target of US$108 billion for its second fund, and has since been investing its own money through a fund with just a fraction of the intended amount. Still, Vision Fund 2 has been highly active in recent weeks: besides Clearco, SoftBank has signed large deals with AI company AnyVision and social media platform IRL. 

Clearco plans to use the cash from the latest round to finance its international expansion, particularly in Europe. In May, the company announced it was expanding into the Netherlands, after launching in the U.K. last October. Clearco will announce its expansion to more countries soon, Romanow said, and plans to enter more countries in Europe throughout the rest of 2021, as well as key markets in Asia.

“Those are not easy—every market is a little bit unique,” Romanow said. “We need a unique regulation path, we need to find and build a community of founders in those places, but it’s one of the reasons we’ve raised so much equity dollars.”

Clearco has brought on a handful of new executives to manage the expansion, including Ruma Bose as chief growth officer and Sarah Clark as head of U.K. On Thursday, the company said it also hired Satwik Seshasai, a former Compass executive, as chief technology officer, and Katrina Shackelford, formerly of Amazon, as vice-president of product.

Correction: Clearco’s US$215-million fundraising round was all equity. This story has been updated.