Payhawk Becomes Bulgaria’s First Unicorn After $100M Round

Payments and expense platform Payhawk raised an additional $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion, in an extended Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, making the startup Bulgaria’s first unicorn.

Also participating in the funding were new investors Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures and Jigsaw VC, as well as existing backers Greenoaks, QED Partners and Earlybird Digital East.

“We always knew that we could build a big company if we addressed a significant problem in a large market. The size of the opportunity still drives our growth and ambition today. Every employee that deals with company payments feels that there should be a better way to do it, but this huge problem was never tackled by a strong product team with a hardcore engineering background. This is what Payhawk brings to the market,” Hristo Borisov, CEO and founder of Payhawk, said, in a press release on Tuesday (March 1). 

“Becoming the first unicorn in Bulgaria is a huge testament to the hard work and resilience of our team over the last three-and-a-half years. We are just at the beginning of our journey, and we cannot wait to continue reinventing how businesses manage their payments,” Borisov added.

See also: B2B Spend Management Startup Payhawk Closes $112M Series B

The new funding brings Payhawk’s Series B round to $215 million as the company moves towards becoming a catalyst for the Bulgarian startup ecosystem while continuing to draw and retain the top 1% of talent in the market. Payhawk’s Series B funding is the second-highest amount for a B2B company in Central and Eastern Europe. 

Payhawk has doubled its annualized recurring revenue every quarter. The company’s previous funding round in November 2021 valued the company at $570 million. 

The fresh infusion of capital will be used to further expand its product team, accelerate efforts to develop best-in-class enterprise features, and grow its sales and marketing team to reach new markets this year.

Read more: Payhawk Launches New Enterprise Suite, Cash Back

“Payhawk is more than just spend management software. It’s a one-stop-shop for finance teams to consolidate the previously disparate systems required to spend, track, process and budget corporate funds. After getting to know the team for over a year, we’ve been blown away with their pace of product development, building the most comprehensive solution in the market in less than four years,” said Arsham Memarzadeh, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.