SoftBank, Warburg Pincus back Singapore's Advanced Intelligence

SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus led the round with participation from the likes of Northstar Group, EDBI, and China-based VC firms Vision Plus Capital and Gaorong Capital. Advance Intelligence is now valued at more than $2 billion.

Founded in 2016, the company gained traction with Advance.AI, which serves customers such as Standard Chartered Bank, Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional (BTPN), KEB Hana Bank, Shopee, GoJek, and Bank Jago. It processes over three million application programming interface (API) queries every day, and its identity verification technology has a 99% accuracy rate.

In its early years – through the closing of a $50 million Series B round in 2018 and an $80 million Series C round in 2019 – the company was known as Advance.AI.

This became the base for a portfolio of credit-enabled products and services that leverage artificial intelligence (AI). In addition to Advance.AI, Advance Intelligence’s enterprise offering includes Ginee, an e-commerce merchant services platform that has supported more than 100,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) since its launch in early 2020.

Ginee has integrated the region’s major e-commerce marketplaces such as Shopee, Tokopedia, Lazada, Bukalapak, and JD.ID. It has processed more than 130 million orders and claims an annualized gross merchandise value (GMV) of approximately $2 billion.

On the consumer side, Advance Intelligence has Atome, which works with over 5,000 online and offline retailers across nine markets; Kredit Pintar, an Indonesian digital lending app with more than 20 million downloads and $1.5 billion in loan disbursements to date; and ND Finance, a licensed digital lending platform in mainland China that has disbursed over $350 million in loans.

The company has a staff of 1,500 and currently operates in 12 markets across South and Southeast Asia, Greater China, and Latin America. The entire platform serves 800 enterprise clients, 100,000 merchants, and 20 million consumers.

The new capital will go towards expanding BNPL and digital lending activities throughout the region, deepening AI and big data analytics capabilities and enterprise client coverage, and recruitment.

“At the heart of our vision is an AI-powered and credit-enabled marketplace ecosystem driving both digital commerce and digital financial services across Asia,” said Jefferson Chen, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Advance Intelligence, in a statement. He is also a partner at GSR Ventures and previously worked for Farallon Capital.

“The new financing will also accelerate the digital transformation of enterprises and merchants, big and small, while enabling more equitable access to credit and financial inclusion for both underbanked and underserved consumers and businesses.”

Advance Intelligence’s other investors include GSR, Pavilion Capital, eGarden Ventures, Unicorn Capital Partners, Provident Growth, ZhenFund, Alpha Startups, and Farallon.

Credit Suisse served as placement agent for the Series D.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Financials
• Expansion
• Technology
• Singapore
• Indonesia
• Growth capital
• Softbank
• Warburg Pincus Asia
• Northstar Group
• EDBI
• Vision Plus Capital
• Gaorong Capital