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Northzone and Wellcome Trust buy $80m stake in Klarna

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Nordic VC Northzone, the Wellcome Trust and mutual fund Wellington Management have bought an $80m stake in Swedish payments company Klarna, reportedly valuing the company at $2.25bn.

The deal saw unnamed Klarna shareholders sell their stakes to the new investors in a secondary transaction.

Klarna's fresh funding comes ahead of the Stockholm-based company's launch in the US, which marks its first expansion outside of the European market.

The new valuation is nearly double the $1.4bn Klarna was deemed to be worth when it raised $100m from existing investors – including Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic and Atomico Ventures – in March last year.

At $80m, the round is among the largest amounts raised in the Nordic region this year, surpassing Trustpilot's $73.5m series-D, but still short of Verne Global's $98m round and substantially smaller than Spotify's $526m fundraise in June.

Including the investment in Klarna, Northzone has participated in three of the largest four venture capital investments in the Nordic region this year, putting its €260m seventh fund raised at the end of 2014 to good use.

As well as being yet another investment in the popular fintech sector, the $80m deal is further proof of an increasing trend of large, late-stage venture funding rounds, as well as US venture firms investing in Nordic companies.

Previous funding
Klarna has raised well in excess of $250m over six rounds, between 2007-2014, from investors including Investment AB Öresund, Atomico, General Atlantic, Sequoia and Partners Group.

It most recently raised capital in March 2014, landing approximately $100m from Sequoia, General Atlantic and Atomico.

Company
Founded in 2005, Klarna is a Stockholm-based technology company providing payments services.

Currently serving 55,000 merchants and 35 million consumers across 18 European markets, the company posted $300m in revenues from processing transactions worth around $7.8bn.

Klarna employs a staff of 1,200.

People
Sebastian Siemiatkowski is the co-founder and CEO of Klarna.