Technology

Another consumer finance business is lining up investors for its largest cash infusion yet.

Affirm, founded by PayPalMax Levchin, is said to be raising as much as $1.5 billion in a combination of debt and equity, according to people with knowledge of the companyfundraising activities. Josh KushnerNew York venture capital firm Thrive Capital is said to be leading the financing, with participation from the San Francisco outfit Spark Capital.

Sources familiar with Affirm, which gives consumers an alternative to personal loans and credit by financing online purchases at point-of-sale, presume the round will be made up largely of a line of credit from a large financial institution, known as a warehouse facility.

Affirm recently raised a $300 million Thrive-led Series F round in April at a valuation of $3 billion. Fintech companies focused on payments and lending, however, require a vast amount of capital to sustain operations. Those capital requirements coupled with the frothiness of the venture capital market justify this additional cash infusion.

To date, Affirm has raised $1.03 billion in funding from Ribbit Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and more, according to PitchBook. Fellow fintech ‘unicorns& Brex, Stripe, SoFi and Kabbage, for context, have collectively raised roughly $5 billion in debt and equity to date.

Affirm offers installment plans to online shoppers, a method of delayed payment historically reserved for large purchase like vehicles or luxury electronics. Using Affirm, consumers can create personalized installment plans for purchases as small as a pair of sneakers sold by StockX or as large as a diamond engagement ring from Diamond Nexus, for example.

Affirm, serving as an alternative to a credit card charge, requires no paperwork, minimum credit score or income. The company, however, makes money the same way as a credit card provider, with interest rates for Affirmloans falling between 10% and 30%.

Affirmfundraising efforts come as more and more companies are devoting ample resources to consumer and B2B lending. Affirm, doubling down on the opportunity in B2B, spun out a new financial services business focused entirely on business lending earlier this year. The company, Resolve, provides a &buy now, pay later& option tailored to B2B sales flow.

&Traditional B2B financing is slow, inaccurate and limits a businesspotential for growth because of an over reliance on email, call centers, faxes and manual invoicing processes,& Resolve wrote in an April press release. &Today, many companies offer a standard net 30-day payment plan only to their best and longest tenured customers, leaving others in need of financing to rely on credit cards or installment loans.&

Meanwhile, companies like Stripe and Square are making a concerted effort to explore other financial frontiers, with the former launching a lending tool as well as a corporate credit card this month. Square, for its part, recently introduced a new debit card, called the Square Card, allowing businesses to withdraw and spend money they&ve collected through Square payments.

Venture investment in fintech companies headquartered in the U.S. is poised to reach new highs this year. In the first eight months of 2019, $10.5 billion was funneled into the sector, following a record high of $11.6 billion in 2018. Globally, fintech investment is increasing, too, with nearly $20 billion deployed this year, per PitchBook.

Competition in the fintech space has accelerated growth and innovation, as consumer-friendly, frictionless tools permeate the conservative and highly-regulated finance industry.

Following a year of fintech mega-rounds, we expect to seem a series of fintech initial public offerings as soon as next year. Affirm, Robinhood, Stripe, SoFi, Coinbase, we&re looking at you.

Voyage, the autonomous vehicle startup that spun out of Udacity, announced Thursday it has raised $31 million in a round led by Franklin Templeton.

Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land-RoverInMotion Ventures, and Chevron Technology Ventures also participated in the round. The company, which operates a ride-hailing service in retirement communities using self-driving cars supported by human safety drivers, has raised a total of $52 million since launching in 2017. The new funding includes a $3 million convertible note.

Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron has big plans for the fresh injection of capital, including hiring and expanding its fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which always have a human safety driver behind the wheel.

Ultimately, the expanded G2 fleet and staff are just the means towards Camerongrander mission to turn Voyage into a truly driverless and profitable ride-hailing company.

&Itnot just about solving self driving technology,& Cameron told TechCrunch in a recent interview, explaining that a cost effective vehicle designed to be driverless is the essential piece required to make this a profitable business.

The company is in the midst of a hiring campaign that Cameron hopes will take its 55-person staff to more than 150 over the next year.Voyage has had some success attracting high-profile people to fill executive-level positions, including CTO Drew Gray, who previously worked at Uber ATG, Otto, Cruise and Tesla, as well as former NIO and Tesla employee Davide Bacchet as director of autonomy.

Funds will also be used to increase its fleet of second-generation self-driving cars (called G2) that are currently being used in a 4,000-resident retirement community in San Jose, Calif., as well as The Villages, a 40-square-mile, 125,000-resident retirement city in Florida. VoyageG2 fleet is 12. Cameron didn&t provide details on how many vehicles it will add to its G2 fleet, only describing it as a &nice jump that will allow us to serve consumers.&

Voyage used the G2 vehicles to create a template of sorts for its eventual driverless vehicle.This driverless product — a term Cameron has used in a previous post on Medium— will initially be limited to 25 miles per hour, which is the driving speed within the two retirement communities in which Voyage currently tests and operates. The vehicle might operate at a low speed, but they are capable of handling complex traffic interactions, he wrote.

&It won&t be the most cost effective vehicle ever made because the industry still in its infancy, but it will be a huge, huge, huge improvement over our G2 vehicle in terms of being be able to scale out a commercial service and make money on each ride,& Cameron said.

Voyage initially used modified Ford Fusion vehicles to test its autonomous vehicle technology and then introduced in July 2918 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, its second generation of autonomous vehicles. But the end goal has always been a driverless product.

TechCrunch previously reported that the company has partnered with an automaker to provide this next-generation vehicle that has been designed specifically for autonomous driving. Cameron wouldn&t name the automaker. The vehicle will beelectric and it won&t be a retrofit like the ChryslerPacifica Hybrid vehicles Voyage currently uses or its first-generation vehicle, a Ford Fusion.

Most importantly, and a detail Cameron did share with TechCrunch, is that the vehicle it uses for its driverless service will have redundancies and safety-critical applications built into it.

Voyage also has two deals in place with Enterprise rental cars and Intact insurance company to help it scale.

&You can imagine leasing is much more optimal than purchasing and owning vehicles on your balance sheet,& Cameron said. &We have those deals in place that will allow us to not only get the vehicle costs down, but other aspects of the vehicle into the right place as well.&

Anti-fraud startup Shape Security has tipped over the $1 billion valuation mark following its latest Series F round of $51 million.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced the fundraise Thursday, bringing the total amount of outside investment to $173 million since the company debuted in 2011.

C5 Capital led the round along with several other new and returning investors, including Kleiner Perkins, HPE Growth, and Norwest Ventures Partners.

Shape Security protects companies against automated and imitation attacks, which often employ bots to break into networks using stolen or reused credentials. Shape uses artificial intelligence to discern bots from ordinary users by comparing known information such as a userlocation, and collected data like mouse movements to shut down attempted automated logins in real-time.

The company said it now protects against two billion fraudulent logins daily.

C5 managing partner André Pienaar said he believes Shape will become the &definitive& anti-fraud platform for the worldlargest companies.

&While we while we expect a strong financial return, we also believe that we can bring Shapeplatform into many of the leading companies in Europe who look to us for strategic ideas that benefit the entire value-chain where B2C applications are used,& Pienaar told TechCrunch.

Shapechief executive Derek Smith said the $51 million injection will go towards the companyinternational expansion and product development — particularly the capabilities of its AI system.

He added that Shape was preparing for an IPO.