Airwallex, which was not too long ago valued at $5.6 billion and is backed by Tencent, has been tipped as one in every of a number of outstanding fintech IPO candidates.
José Sarmento | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
TencentFunds-backed startup Airwallex has reached $500 million in annual income and can gear up for an preliminary public providing in 2026, CEO and co-founder Jack Zhang informed CNBC in an unique interview.
“I believe the following huge milestone is $1 billion,” mentioned Zhang, responding to a query about what’s subsequent for the Singapore-based firm after it crossed the $500 million ARR milestone final month. “Hopefully we will obtain that in 2026 or 2027. That is the purpose.”
Run price is a tough measure of the income an organization will make in a single 12 months, primarily based on month-to-month efficiency.
Zhang mentioned Airwallex has seen important development in its enterprise over the previous 12 months, boosted by an enlargement into developed markets akin to the UK, Europe and North America.
Within the Americas area, Airwallex grew its income by greater than 300% year-over-year, in response to figures shared with CNBC.
The UK, Europe and North America now account for greater than 35% of Airwallex’s whole transaction volumes, Zhang mentioned.
When requested by CNBC how he feels in regards to the prospect of an IPO for his firm, Zhang mentioned: “For us, it is about being prepared for the IPO within the subsequent two years, in order that now we have the selection whether or not or to not do it.” to go.”
“In 2025 we are going to put together every little thing and we will determine what to do after 2026,” he added.
Airwallex has surpassed $100 billion in annual cost processing volumes this 12 months, Zhang mentioned, up 73% from final 12 months. That got here as the corporate noticed volumes develop throughout all its merchandise, together with funds, overseas trade, payouts and issuance.
“It took us 9 years to cross the $100 billion mark,” Zhang mentioned. “Hopefully it should take lower than a 12 months to succeed in $200 billion.”
Deploying ‘AI staff’ to save lots of prices
Airwallex is at the moment loss-making, though the corporate was worthwhile on a month-to-month foundation in December 2023 and January of this 12 months.
Zhang mentioned Airwallex shouldn’t be prioritizing attaining annual web revenue given its present development price, however the firm has discovered methods to maintain prices low.
Synthetic intelligence, he says, helps Airwallex make its workers extra productive, whereas in the end enabling the corporate to do extra with much less.
For instance, he mentioned, Airwallex is experimenting with 11x, an organization that provides different corporations entry to digital “AI staff,” changing a good portion of its gross sales improvement representatives (SDRs) – workers targeted on managing gross sales leads.
That pilot solely not too long ago went dwell, he mentioned. However Zhang is so assured in adopting AI brokers to tackle the day-to-day work of SDRs that he thinks they may change as many as 70% of these roles inside his firm with AI.
Nevertheless, Zhang emphasised that whereas some roles will basically get replaced by AI, most will probably be enhanced by the expertise as Airwallex’s gross sales groups will have the ability to enhance their productiveness.
For instance, one SDR can handle 5 digital SDRs.
Airwallex, which was not too long ago valued at $5.6 billion and is backed by Tencent, has been tipped as one in every of a number of main fintech IPO candidates.
However Zhang mentioned the temper within the monetary expertise sector remains to be principally bitter in the mean time.
“Investor notion remains to be not nice and nonetheless conservative,” Zhang informed CNBC. “That is been happening for about three years. Not a lot has truly modified.”
Nevertheless, he added: “Fintech is a really huge market. You see huge corporations like Nubank, Revolut, Stripe, Adyen continues to do very properly.”
“Buyers will nonetheless select the proper corporations to spend money on. We simply want to make sure that Airwallex is the primary in international funds within the monetary area,” mentioned Zhang.
