Mexican fintech start-up R2 secures $50m debt facility and $9m in fresh equity
Mexico-based embedded financing start-up R2 has secured a new debt facility of up to $50 million from Community Investment Management (CIM) alongside $9 million in fresh equity funding in a round led by Hi Ventures and Cometa.
R2 secures $50m debt facility and $9m in fresh equity
The company says the equity injection is an extension of its $15 million Series A round from 2022 led by Gradient Ventures, a fund launched by Google targeting AI-focused start-ups.
Gradient Ventures also participated in the extension round along with fellow existing backer Y Combinator and new backer Endeavor Catalyst.
Founded in 2020, R2 offers an API-first embedded lending platform built to enable companies to offer revenue-based financing to their small and medium-sized business (SMB) customers in Latin America.
In a blog post announcing the funding, the company says its tech utilises “machine learning-based underwriting on transactional data” and has so far been used “to offer financing to more than 47,000 businesses across Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Peru”.
R2, which also secured a $100 million debt facility last year to expand its Mexico operations, says its new debt facility will be used to fuel its growth in Chile.
It adds that the fresh equity funding will be used to “invest in computing power to train more AI-based models” and “to accelerate product development initiatives to integrate more platforms”.
Roger Larach, R2’s co-founder and CEO, says: “The capital enables us to double down in our core revenue-based financing product, while also building towards the end goal, which is to provide a suite of financial services – lines of credit, credit cards, debit accounts, instant payouts, and insurance – to users at the point of need, right on the platforms they use on a daily basis.”
