British neobank Monzo boosts funding round to $610 million to crack U.S. market, launch pensions
Monzo CEO TS Anil.
Monzo
British neobank Monzo said Wednesday that it’s raised another $190 million, lifting the total it’s raised so far this year to $610 million.
The company told CNBC it raised the cash from new investors including Hedosophia, a backer of top European fintechs including N26 and Qonto. CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, also participated in the round.
Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC also participated in Monzo’s latest fundraise, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity as details of GIC’s involvement aren’t yet public.
The latest funding values Monzo at roughly $5.2 billion, an increase on the $5 billion valuation it attained in March when it raised $430 million. The total $610 million round marks the single-biggest funding round for a European fintech in the past year, according to Dealroom data.
TS Anil, CEO and co-founder of Monzo, told CNBC his firm plans to use the cash to build new products and accelerate its international expansion plans.
“At the heart of it we are a mission-oriented company that’s looking to build the single place where people can meet all of their financial needs,” Anil told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
“What’s exciting to me is that, as we pursue that mission of changing people’s relationship with money, we’ve built a business model that is congruent with that as well, with this model that is built entirely around the customer.”
Monzo entered the black for the first time last year, reporting two consecutive months of profitability at the end of its 2023 fiscal year. Anil said Monzo’s looking to ramp up profits with diversification into other income generators, like lending and savings.
Notably, Anil said that Monzo’s planning to launch its first pensions product in the next six to nine months.
That would put it in competition with traditional lenders including Barclays and NatWest. Last year, NatWest acquired 85% of U.K. workplace pension services provider Cushon for £144 million ($180 million).
Global expansion plans
Monzo’s funding expansion caps off a busy year for the nine-year-old firm, which now counts more than 9 million retail customers in the U.K. — 2 million of whom joined Monzo last year alone — and over 400,000 business customers.
Last year saw Monzo make its first foray into investments with a feature allowing customers to invest in funds managed by BlackRock.
Anil said Monzo identified that about a third of people using the service had never invested previously — and, more notably, 45% of the women investing via the Monzo app are first-time investors.
Another big priority for Monzo in the coming months is international expansion.
The company recently restarted its U.S. expansion efforts, hiring a long-time executive from Block’s Cash App as its new U.S. CEO after earlier abandoning a bid to acquire a banking license from U.S. regulators.
For now, Anil says, Monzo’s team in the U.S. is primarily focusing on product to ensure that the service it has there is of high enough quality that it can compete with major incumbents like JPMorgan and Citibank.
The U.S. has proven notoriously difficult for European neobanks to crack.
Berlin-based digital bank N26 notably withdrew from the U.S. in 2021.
Revolut, meanwhile, has failed to formally file an application for a U.S. bank charter yet despite having earlier said it intends to file a draft application for a U.S. bank license.
“What I like about how we’re approaching this is, at the heart of it, it’s not just words,” Anil told CNBC in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
“The necessary conditions for the U.S. for us is getting the product right. That’s what we’re spending our time and effort on there.”
European expansion is also on the cards, Anil said, although he didn’t commit to a date for when this will happen.
Mortgages are coming
Longer term, Monzo is also planning to launch a mortgages product, which would see it compete much more aggressively with U.K. retail banks in the world of lending.
Monzo currently offers monthly installment plans and consumer loans via its app.
It also has a “Mortgage Tracker” feature which lets users track how much they’ve paid toward their mortgage and how much equity they’ve built.
But it’s yet to officially roll out a service that would let people apply for mortgages directly within its app.
Anil said Monzo is in the early stages of exploring partnerships with lenders to offer this.
He declined to name any prospective partners.
One thing Monzo hasn’t got any immediate plans for is an initial public offering.
Although he thinks Monzo will make a “great public company one day,” Anil said it’s still too early to talk of an IPO. He says he’s focused on growing Monzo at scale before reaching that milestone.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) listens as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Monday said that he initially asked Nvidia for a 20% cut of the chipmaker’s sales to China, but the number came down to 15% after CEO Jensen Huang negotiated with him.
The comments came after news broke over the weekend that Nvidia agreed to pay the federal government a 15% cut in return for receiving export control licenses that will allow it to once again sell the H20 chip to China and Chinese companies. Nvidia’s Huang visited Trump in the White House on Friday.
“I said, ‘listen, I want 20% if I’m going to approve this for you, for the country,'” Trump said in a press conference in Washington.
Trump said that Nvidia’s H20 is an “old chip that China already has” and is “obsolete.” He compared the H20 chip to Nvidia’s current fastest artificial intelligence chip, which is called Blackwell, and said that he wouldn’t allow those to be sold to China without significant downgrades, such as a 30% to 50% reduction in performance.
“The Blackwell is super-duper advanced. I wouldn’t make a deal with that,” Trump said, adding that it was possible to make a deal for a “somewhat enhanced in a negative way” version of Blackwell.
“That’s the latest and the greatest in the world. Nobody has it. They won’t have it for five years,” Trump said.
One reason for the U.S. export controls is fear that providing advanced chips to China could allow the foreign power to leapfrog the U.S. in AI capabilities. Many have said that could pose a threat to the national security of the U.S.
Trump said that China already has chips with some similar capabilities to the H20.
Huang has said that it is better for U.S. national security if Chinese AI developers use U.S. technology, and that denying them access to Nvidia chips would actually encourage the Chinese chip industry to develop and catch up.
“He’s selling a essentially old chip,” Trump said. “Huawei has a similar chip.”
The H20 is a Chinese-specific chip that has had its performance slowed down. It is related to Nvidia’s H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S. The H20 was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on AI chips in 2023.
In April, the Trump administration said it would require a license to export the H20 chip, and in May, Huang said that “effectively closed” the market off to Nvidia. Huang said that Nvidia was expecting to sell about $8 billion in H20 chips in the July quarter before sales were stopped.
“While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” an Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC on Monday.
Trump on Monday also said that Huang plans to visit him again to negotiate export licenses for the Blackwell chips.
“I think he’s coming to see me again about that,” Trump said.
A White House official confirmed to CNBC that AMD, the second-place AI chip maker, will also pay 15% to receive an export license for its China-focused AI chip, the Instinct MI308.
WATCH: Nvidia, AMD to pay U.S. 15% of AI chip sales in China to secure export licenses
After four previous scrubs or delays in a row since August 7th SpaceX launches Amazon KF-02 Kuipeer Satellites after the 5th attempt August 11th 2025 at 8:35 AM SLC-40 Cape Canaveral, Brevard County, Florida USA.
Scott Schilke| SipaUSA |AP
Amazon shipped another batch of internet-beaming satellites into orbit on Monday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, after four previous launch attempts were interrupted by weather issues.
Monday’s launch is the fourth Kuiper mission, and Amazon now has 102 satellites in orbit.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 8:35 a.m. ET. Roughly an hour after launch, SpaceX confirmed all 24 of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites were successfully deployed.
The mission was originally scheduled for last Thursday, but SpaceX was forced to scrub the launch, along with three more attempts over the past few days due to rainfall.
For the second time, Amazon turned to Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, its chief competitor in the low-earth orbit satellite market, for help building out its constellation.
SpaceX’s Starlink is currently the dominant provider of low-earth orbit satellite internet, with a constellation of roughly 8,000 satellites and about 5 million customers worldwide.
Amazon is racing to get more of its Kuiper satellites into space to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC requires that Amazon have about 1,600 satellites in orbit by the end of July 2026, with the full 3,236-satellite constellation launched by July 2029.
Amazon has booked up to 83 launches, including three rides with SpaceX.
While the company is still in the early stages of building out its constellation, Amazon has already inked deals with governments as it hopes to begin commercial service later this year.
WATCH: Amazon launches first Kuiper internet satellites into space
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