Monzo, the fintech which has become one of Britain’s biggest consumer banking groups, is this weekend putting the finishing touches to an expanded fundraising involving one of the world’s best-known technology investors.

Sky News has learnt that Monzo has agreed terms with Hedosophia, an early backer of Airbnb and Uber, for it to become a shareholder in the bank.

City sources said on Sunday that Monzo could announce as soon as this week that Hedosophia and Singapore’s Government Investment Corporation (GIC) were participating in an overall fundraising worth close to £500m.

The larger-than-expected round makes it one of the largest ever achieved by a British tech company.

One insider said that GIC was investing over £50m, with Hedosophia also committing tens of millions of pounds.

Hedosophia, which declined to comment, is an early-growth investor founded by Ian Osborne, who has backed some of the world’s biggest tech names over the last 15 years.

Among the British tech companies it has backed include Wise, the London-listed money transfer business, and Marshmallow, the insurance group.

Monzo’s expanded fundraising is likely to mean that it will not require any further capital if it decides, as expected, to go public in the next couple of years.

The digital bank, which has millions of customers in Britain, recently secured a valuation in excess of £4bn after concluding the initial phase of its funding round.

Founded in 2015, it is now profitable and has diversified into investments and instant access savings accounts.

It now ranks as the seventh-biggest bank in Britain by number of customers.

The new fundraising was led by Capital G, the independent growth fund of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

The company is among a new generation of banks which have emerged since the last financial crisis and begun to accumulate a significant share of the UK retail banking market.

Rivals include Starling Bank, which recently named a permanent chief executive to replace its founder, Anne Boden.

Revolut, which was valued at $33bn (£26.5bn) in a funding round in 2021, has yet to receive a UK banking licence despite more than a year of talks with regulators.

Monzo has recovered spectacularly from a difficult period two years ago, when it emerged that the City watchdog was investigating it for potential breaches of anti-money laundering and financial crime rules.

It has historically been loss-making, in common with most start-ups, reporting a loss of £116m in the year to the end of February, but is expected to be profitable this year – a major milestone for a standalone digital bank.

Monzo recently revamped its corporate structure as it pursues an international expansion strategy that will serve as the prelude to a stock market listing.

Monzo Bank Holding Group was established to avoid the company facing punitive capital treatment by British regulators as it launches in new overseas markets.

Existing Monzo investors include the Chinese group Tencent, Passion Capital, Accel and General Catalyst.

Monzo is run by TS Anil, its chief executive, and chaired by Gary Hoffman, one of Britain’s most prominent bank executives.

On Sunday, Monzo declined to comment.

After falling into a 2-0 series hole while losing six straight and nine of their past 11 games to the Vegas Golden Knights, the Dallas Stars had to do something in Game 3.

And they did. The Stars snapped their losing skid to the defending Stanley Cup champions, with 20-year-old forward Wyatt Johnston scoring twice, including the winning goal in their 3-2 overtime win Saturday in the Western Conference quarterfinals at T-Mobile Arena.

“We knew the situation coming into Vegas,” said Stars center Tyler Seguin, who finished with an assist. “We know these guys are the champs from last year, and we know how good they are on home ice. … We knew we had to come in here, we had to steal one no matter. Now, we want to steal two.”

Coming close but not being close enough to win games had been the narrative for the Stars entering Game 3.

They opened Game 1 with a 4-3 loss and were within striking distance in Game 2 before an empty-netter from Jack Eichel late in the third period created extra separation in a 3-1 defeat.

Game 3 saw Dallas find its footing early. Johnston scored the opening goal near the halfway point of the first period before Miro Heiskanen doubled the lead to 2-0 a little more than five minutes into the second period.

Having a two-goal lead, however, was short-lived. The Golden Knights tied the score on a pair of second-period goals from Brayden McNabb and Eichel.

Both teams struggled to come up with the winning goal in the third and in overtime. Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger finished with 32 saves and a .941 save percentage for what was his strongest performance in the postseason.

Oettinger’s counterpart, Logan Thompson, was one of the main reasons why the Golden Knights even reached overtime. Johnston’s first goal along with Heiskanen’s salvo that gave the Stars a 2-0 advantage was the product of an attack that went from struggling to find consistency in the first two games of the series to one that showed why the Stars are among the teams that could potentially dethrone the Golden Knights this postseason.

Through the first two games of this series, Thompson had faced 50 shots. The Stars already had 33 shots by the end of the second period before finishing with 46 shots, with Thompson stopping 43 of them.

Johnston was responsible for a game-high eight shots, with his final being the winner that he snuck beneath the crossbar and over Thompson’s shoulder from a side angle to bring the Stars within a game of tying the series.

“I tried a couple low, and it didn’t work,” said Johnston, who led the Stars with 33 goals in the regular season. “So, I tried to throw one up high and I’m lucky enough it worked.”

Stars coach Peter DeBoer reiterated afterward that his team had to be the more desperate club Saturday night.

DeBoer’s logic was simple. The Golden Knights were still going to have a series lead no matter what happened in Game 3. The Stars, on the other hand, had to find a way to avoid going back to Dallas trailing 3-0.

Getting off to an early start. Finding ways to constantly get shots. Making sure the Golden Knights were the ones who struggled to find cohesion at times. These are the details that allowed the Stars to win Saturday, and they’re also the attributes DeBoer said proves the team has shown gradual improvement since the start of the playoffs.

“What I do like about our game is that our game’s building,” DeBoer said. “Game 2 was better than Game 1. Game 3 was better than Game 2. That’s a great sign for me on our group.”

Britain plans to equip its armed forces with a homegrown hypersonic cruise missile by the end of the decade, according to a report.

Military chiefs are under pressure to catch up with China, Russia and the US by developing a weapon capable of flying at speeds higher than Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound, according to The Sunday Telegraph.

The Ministry of Defence wants the missile to be designed and built in the UK and to enter service by 2030.

Plans are at an early stage, the newspaper reported, although there is no decision on whether the missile will be launched from land, sea or air.

It comes after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to spend 2.5% of gross domestic product on defence by 2030.

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Ballistic weapons can also reach hypersonic speeds but the difference is in manoeuvrability – ballistic weapons generally have fixed paths but the path of a hypersonic weapon can be changed after launch, making it difficult to destroy.

The US, Russia and China are the main players in the hypersonic weapons race but other countries, such as North Korea, claim to have tested hypersonic weapons.

Read more:
Sean Bell: Putin’s ‘undefeatable’ missile was a costly illusion
US tests hypersonic weapon with speeds ‘five times greater than speed of sound’

The development of hypersonic capabilities is part of Pillar Two of AUKUS – a defence and security pact between the UK, Australia and the US.

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Last month the US tested a hypersonic cruise missile on an atoll in the Marshall Islands in a message to its rival in the Pacific – China. It is the latest in a number of hypersonic weapons tests the country has completed in recent years.

A spokesperson for the MoD would not comment in detail on the development of Britain’s hypersonic missile capability, citing national security, but confirmed “hypersonic technologies to further develop UK sovereign advanced capabilities” were being pursued.

“We continue to invest in our equipment to meet current and future threats,” they added.