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SumUp Chief Financial Officer Hermione McKee said the fresh capital gives the company “more firepower to act on opportunities,” including acquisitions and new country launches.

SumUp

British payments startup SumUp, known for its small card readers, on Monday announced it has raised 285 million euros ($306.6 million) in a bumper round of funding that values the company north of $8.6 billion.

Sixth Street Growth, the growth arm of global investment firm Sixth Street, led the investment in SumUp, while existing existing investor Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, fintech investment firm Fin Capital, and debt financing firm Liquidity Group, participated in SumUp’s latest round as well. The round predominantly consisted of equity, though a small portion of the funds was raised as debt.

SumUp Chief Financial Officer Hermione McKee said the fresh capital gives the company “more firepower to act on opportunities that we see arising over the course of the next two years.”

“If we think about our geographical expansion, in August we launched Australia as our 36th market globally,” McKee told CNBC in an interview last week ahead of the news.

“We have this foothold in Latin America and there’s more expansion that can be done there. Then we look at Asia, how do we think about that region, and then obviously opportunities across Africa. There’s so many opportunities globally. We’re constantly assessing this ‘buy versus build’ strategy.”

With this round, the company says it “continues to build further” on the valuation it attained in the summer of 2022, when SumUp was last valued at 8 billion euros ($8.6 billion) in a 2022 funding round that saw the firm raise a whopping 590 million euros of capital for growth and global expansion. A SumUp spokesperson confirmed the deal is an up round, meaning its valuation is higher than it was previously.

That’s no small achievement given the state of European technology valuations, which have taken a hammering over the past year as investors flee from tech due to higher interest rates and macroeconomic headwinds.

According to venture data firm PitchBook, median valuations declined in the third quarter across all stages compared to 2022, with late-stage valuations showing the most resilience and growth-stage the least.

Earlier this year, existing shareholders in SumUp sold stakes in the firm at a heavily discounted price to its last official valuation. One, online coupons site Groupon, disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it was selling off shares in SumUp at a price that would value the company at just 3.9 billion euros ($4.2 billion).

M&A shopping spree ahead

SumUp, which competes primarily with Jack Dorsey’s payments business Block, formerly known as Square, as well as PayPal’s iZettle, FIS’ WorldPay, Stripe, and Adyen, has been expanding into new lines of business lately, not least lending. The company launched a service that enables merchant to apply for a cash advance or business loans up to a certain limit based on their card sales revenues.

SumUp secured a $100 million credit facility from Victory Park Capital this summer to bolster its cash advance offering. McKee said that the lending product has been going well so far, with the vast majority of its merchants paying back in a timely manner.

“We’re seeing quick returns on that capital, and merchants that are genuinely supporting their growth. And then they’re able to repay that back in a short time periods for the transaction volume that we see,” McKee said.

“We haven’t seen any real pullback in terms of repayment data over the course of the last six months,” she added. “Our models are constantly iterating to make sure that that those factors we’re observing don’t become stale.”

SumUp also launched new point-of-sale offerings, including self-service kiosks that let customers order in stores using a touchscreen interface.

SumUp recently launched Apple’s Tap to Pay feature in the U.K. and the Netherlands, which enables people to tap their card or phone on a vendor’s iPhone using a smartphone app. It’s also been upgrading its existing point-of-sale systems, with its POS Lite and POS Pros countertop systems that can be paired with SumUp’s card readers.

Going forward, SumUp plans to explore more merger and acquisition opportunities to help it drive its expansion abroad.

“M&A is always something that’s on the table,” McKee said. “We have expanded into new geographies in the past with M&A. That’s something we’re always assessing. We have experience in both building an ecosystem as well as buying. And both of these things are available to us, obviously, yes, this just gives us greater optionality and the ability to move quickly, should we see the right opportunity arise.”

SumUp has no immediate plans to go public, McKee added, as it has ample access to capital in the private markets.

“I think it’s proven by this round that we actually have access to private pools of capital, so we don’t need to IPO,” she said.

“We’re constantly improving processes, actually making sure that we are operating at a standard and quality that is appropriate for public markets. But at the same time, this is not something that, you know, is imminent, and around the corner that we’re actively planning for today.”

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AI-led tech slide extends into third day as Oracle, Nvidia, fall in premarket trading

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AI-led tech slide extends into third day as Oracle, Nvidia, fall in premarket trading

U.S. artificial intelligence names were in negative territory in premarket trading on Friday, extending losses into their third day.

Oracle was 0.9% lower in premarket trading, paring earlier losses which saw it fall 1.3%. Nvidia shed 0.7%, Micron fell 0.9%, and CoreWeave was down 1.3% at 5:16 a.m. ET.  

Broadcom, which reported a strong quarter on Thursday, was last seen down 5%.

The share price of cloud computing and database software maker Oracle plummeted on Thursday, ending the session around 11% lighter after revenue earnings missed analyst expectations on Wednesday.

Oracle plunges on weak revenue

It dragged other AI-related names down with it despite a record-breaking rally elsewhere on Wall Street, suggesting investors are rotating out of tech into other parts of the market.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.26% on Thursday, despite the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 hitting fresh records at the end of the session.

Despite booming demand for Oracle’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, it posted mixed results this week. Revenue came in at $16.06 billion, compared with $16.21 billion expected by analysts, according to data compiled by LSEG.

It followed widespread speculation around the long-term health of the company, with investors cautious about its reliance on debt to execute its AI infrastructure build-out. The broader industry’s circular dealmaking has also raised eyebrows.

“We think recent investor scrutiny on artificial intelligence’s potential and circular GPU deals can be overly punitive to key AI suppliers like Oracle,” said Morningstar Equity Analyst Luke Yang. “Oracle remains a respectable cloud provider that enjoys strong switching costs across its database, application, and infrastructure lineup.”

That said, the firm reduced its fair value estimate for wide-moat Oracle to $286 per share, down from $340. Morningstar’s moat rating refers to its assessment of a company’s durable competitive advantage.

“We lowered our long-term earnings outlook as delivering Oracle’s planned capacity on time now proved to be a harder task. However, we continue to view shares as undervalued,” Yang added.

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CNBC Daily Open: Record high U.S. stocks as investors rotate out of tech

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CNBC Daily Open: Record high U.S. stocks as investors rotate out of tech

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 11, 2025, in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced on Thursday, with both hitting fresh closing records. The Russell 2000 index also ended the session at a new high, following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quarter-point cut on Wednesday.

But if investors analyze Thursday’s individual stock movements, they will see not all is well with the AI play yet. Oracle shares plunged nearly 11%, a day after it reported weak quarterly revenue, higher capital expenditure and long-term lease commitments. Oracle’s slide dragged down AI-related names such as Nvidia and Micron.

In extended trading, Broadcom shares fell 4.5%. The chipmaker beat Wall Street’s expectations for earnings and revenue, but CEO Hock Tan appeared to have failed to address worries that their largest customer, Google, might eventually make more of its chips in-house. Rising memory prices would also pressure margins, while the company’s chip deal with OpenAI might not be binding.

That’s why the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.26% despite other major U.S. indexes hitting records. Putting the two together, that means investors are rotating out of tech into other parts of the market. The S&P 500 financials sector, for instance, closed at a fresh record, buoyed by jumps in Visa and Mastercard.

Even though the AI theme seems to be under scrutiny, other sectors are performing well on the back of a resilient U.S. economy — as signaled by Fed officials on Wednesday — and buoyed by interest-rate cut. So long as nothing throws a spanner in the works, looks like we’re all set for a happy holiday season.

CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

New records for U.S. stocks. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average notched fresh highs on Thursday, but the Nasdaq Composite, weighed down by Oracle, underperformed and fell. Asia-Pacific markets advanced Friday, with several major indexes rising at least 1%.

Broadcom’s fourth-quarter results beat expectations. The chipmaker also saw its net income nearly double from a year ago, and revealed that Anthropic is its $10 billion customer. But shares slumped in extended trading.

Disney to invest $1 billion in OpenAI. The media giant will also allow Sora, OpenAI’s video generator, to use its copyrighted characters, under a $1 billion licensing agreement. “We think this is a good investment for the company,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC.

Reddit launches legal challenge in Australia. The county introduced a ban on social media for teens under 16, which came into effect on Wednesday. Reddit argues that the law is “invalid on the basis of the implied freedom of political communication.”

[PRO] Where will Oracle go from here? Analysts are re-looking their price targets for Oracle stock after the firm released a disappointing and confusing earnings report on Wednesday.

And finally…

Gen. David Petraeus, Former CIA Director, Fmr. Central Commander and American commander in Iraq.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Trump scared Europe with his national security strategy. That’s no bad thing, ex-CIA chief says

White House’s new national security strategy gave Europe a scare last week as it warned the region faced “civilizational erasure” and questioned whether it could remain a geopolitical partner for America.

The strategy was, “in a way, going after the Europeans but, frankly, some of the Europeans needed to be gotten after because I watched as four different presidents tried to exhort the Europeans to do more for their own defense and now that’s actually happening,” David Petraeus, former CIA director and four-star U.S. Army general, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

Holly Ellyatt

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Reddit challenges Australia’s under-16 social media ban in High Court filing, says law curbs political speech

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Reddit challenges Australia’s under-16 social media ban in High Court filing, says law curbs political speech

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Reddit, the popular community-focused forum, has launched a legal challenge against Australia’s social media ban for teens under 16, arguing that the newly enacted law is ineffective and goes too far by restricting political discussion online.

In its application to Australia’s High Court, the social news and aggregation platform said the law is “invalid on the basis of the implied freedom of political communication”, saying that it burdens political communication.

Canberra’s ban came into effect on Wednesday and targeted 10 major services, including Alphabet‘s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok, RedditSnapchat and Elon Musk’s X. All targeted platforms had agreed to comply with the policy to varying degrees.

Australia’s Prime Minister’s office, Attorney-General’s Department and other social media platforms did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Under the law, the targeted platforms will have to take “reasonable steps” to prevent underage access, using ageverification methods such as inference from online activity, facial estimation via selfies, uploaded IDs, or linked bank details.

Reddit’s application to the courts seeks to either declare the law invalid or exclude the platform from the provisions of the law.

In a statement to CNBC, Reddit said that while it agrees with the importance of protecting persons under 16, the law could isolate teens “from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions).”

It also said in its application that the law “burdens political communication,” saying “the political views of children inform the electoral choices of many current electors, including their parents and their teachers, as well as others interested in the views of those soon to reach the age of maturity.”

The platform also argued that it should not be subject to the law, saying it operates more as a forum for adults facilitating “knowledge sharing” between users than as a traditional social network, saying that it does not import contact lists or address books.

“Reddit is significantly different from other sites that allow for users to become “friends” with one another, or to post photos about themselves, or to organise events,” the platform said in its application.

Reddit further said in its court filing that most content on its platform is accessible without an account, and pointed out a person under the age of 16 “can be more easily protected from online harm if they have an account, being the very thing that is prohibited.”

“That is because the account can be subject to settings that limit their access to particular kinds of content that may be harmful to them,” it adds.

Despite its objections, Reddit said that the challenge was not an attempt to avoid complying with the law, nor was it an effort to retain young users for business reasons.

“There are more targeted, privacy-preserving measures to protect young people online without resorting to blanket bans,” the platform said.

— CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this story.

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