Ant Group Looks to Raise $1 Billion For International Growth

Ant Group’s international arm is reportedly considering a $1 billion fundraise to speed growth.

That’s according to a report Wednesday (June 10) from Bloomberg News, citing sources familiar with the matter who say the FinTech has been gauging interest from investors in a round that could value Ant International at $10 billion or higher.

The sources say the funding could set the stage for the business to go public in Hong Kong as soon as this year. Bloomberg notes that this would resurrect a process stemming back to the beginning of the decade, when the main Ant Group was prepping what would have been the world’s largest-ever initial public offering (IPO).

That was before regulators in China halted the plan, leading to a restructuring in 2024 that birthed an independent board for Ant International, the report added.

PYMNTS has contacted Ant for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The news follows a report from earlier this year that investors in Ant were lobbying for the company to take its international arm public. This came amid strong growth in that business, due in part to the success of the company’s digital wallet.

PYMNTS examined the FinTech IPO space in March, following announcements by several companies in the sector who were either slowing or reconsidering plans to go public.

Taken together, the report said, those announcements are a sign of a broader hesitation about whether market conditions will generate valuations in line with business fundamentals.

“At the center of that hesitation is the way public markets are treating FinTech revenue,” PYMNTS wrote.

“A significant portion of the sector relies on transaction-driven income. Payments companies depend on volumes and interchange. Trading platforms are tied to market activity. That model performs well when activity is strong.”

But it becomes more difficult to value when activity is affected by macro shocks. The gulf between growth and predictability is now shaping whether companies proceed with IPO plans, the report added.

In other Ant news, the company’s Alipay last month debuted what it called “the world’s first AI Wallet and Token Pay to power agentic economy.”

It was part of a new artificial intelligence (AI) payments infrastructure designed for businesses ranging from AI firms to traditional retailers.

“While the essence of commerce remains unchanged in the age of AI, the emergence of AI agents is reshaping everything,” Cyril Han, CEO of Alipay parent Ant Group, said in a news release provided at the time.