Crowdfund Insider's weekly roundup put Sam Altman and Cagney in the headline, but when I went down the list of sixteen items the largest equity round belonged to neither of their companies. It belonged to Capitolis. The roundup says the New York company "raised a $120 million Series E and additional debt financing". Citi led the equity. Eight other banks and market firms joined.
I set the smaller items aside, including Spiko's 90 million dollar Series B and the 37.5 million dollars for Altman-backed Meanwhile, because none of them came with a second document as detailed as the one Capitolis published. Agibank's 410 million dollars was a fund issuance, not equity. I left it out too.
Capitolis's own release, dated 6 October, gives the full figure. It closed 220 million dollars in total, made up of the Series E "at a $1.9 billion valuation, as well as debt". I did the subtraction. That leaves about 100 million dollars of borrowing, and the Captables write-up gives the same 100 million figure.
To me the investor list reads like a dealer panel. Citi led as an existing investor, Bank of America, Nomura and Tradeweb Markets came in as new strategic investors, and Barclays, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan, State Street and UBS returned for another round. The debt comes from three lenders. They are First Citizens Innovation Banking, formerly Silicon Valley Bank, Hercules Capital and Pinegrove Venture Partners.
Siris Singh, Citi's global head of markets strategic investments, framed it as a bet on market plumbing, saying the bank is "investing selectively in businesses shaping the infrastructure and evolution of global capital markets". I read that as banks buying a stake in a tool they already use. That is my reading, not Citi's.
The release is open about the purpose. The money supports the purchase of eSecLending, which adds securities lending to the Capitolis platform and brings in a network of institutional asset owners such as pension funds and insurers, according to Captables. Founder and chief executive Gil Mandelzis said the financing "will enable our acquisition of eSecLending".
Captables adds the price. Citing an interview Mandelzis gave CTech, it describes a 200 million dollar all-cash purchase, announced on 29 September, that still needs regulatory and antitrust approval before it can close. So most of the 220 million dollars is acquisition money. Captables says it plainly: "This isn't one $220 million venture round." I agree with that. My guess is that the banks care more about the eSecLending network than about the price per share. That is a guess, and I have no inside view of it.
Tradeweb's Serene Murphy explained why a trading venue would back the deal. She called securities lending "the next frontier in the electronification we've seen across our markets". In her words, that market "has historically relied on manual processes". The deal excludes eSecLending (Europe) Limited, which will keep serving the business being sold.
Captables, again citing CTech, says the 1.9 billion dollar valuation is 300 million dollars, or about 19%, above the 1.6 billion dollars set in the company's 2022 round. I find four years for that step-up modest. For a company selling to the same banks that fund it, I would not call it weak.
One number does not match. Dealroom's news item describes a 77.6 million dollar Series E equity round, while the company release, Crowdfund Insider and Captables all say 120 million dollars, and I trust the company's own release on its own round. I cannot explain the Dealroom figure. It may count only part of the equity.
The release does not say whether 1.9 billion dollars is pre-money or post-money. If it is post-money, the 120 million dollars bought roughly 6.3% of the company. I could not find revenue or profit in any document. FT Partners advised Capitolis, with WilmerHale and Goodwin Procter as lawyers. The eSecLending deal still waits for approval, and the round makes far less sense if that 200 million dollar purchase fails.