Airwallex hits $11 billion valuation as fintech pivots to autonomous finance run by AI agents

Airwallex hits $11 billion valuation with $320 million raise as fintech pushes into finance run by AI agents

He turned down $1.2 billion from Stripe. Now his company is worth $8 billion Alongside the raise, the company also announced two new AI-focused products. One, called T:0, is an AI-native platform designed to automate corporate finance functions, including bookkeeping, tax, compliance and reporting. The product is currently in private beta and could be made more widely available in the coming weeks. The second product, Airi, is an agentic consumer wallet that Airwallex said will eventually support delegated agent payments, spending limits, permission controls and multi-currency balances. Airwallex said it has obtained more than 85 licenses across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, which it said positions it to support the emerging agentic economy. "The licenses, local network integrations, and settlement rails we spent ten years constructing are precisely the kind of infrastructure it needs," co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang said. "This new capital lets us move faster into Airwallex's next chapter." Zhang told the Australian Financial Review in a recent interview that the new financing could allow the company to delay a public listing, as investment in AI development has made its margins "too volatile to go public." Airwallex provides multi-currency payment services to global businesses, including McLaren, Qantas, Canva and Shein. The company was last valued at $8 billion after raising $330 million in a December funding round also led by Addition. Founded in Australia in 2015, Airwallex has faced growing scrutiny over its ties to China. The company, headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, has 27 offices globally, including in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. Airwallex is backed by several major Australian venture capital firms and a string of heavyweight Chinese investors, including Tencent and HongShan Capital, formerly known as Sequoia China. In December, prominent Silicon Valley investor Keith Rabois, who is also a board member of rival U.S. fintech Ramp, accused Airwallex of being a "Chinese backdoor into sensitive American data." The company has rejected those allegations. Zhang, in a recent statement, described them as "wild and totally unfounded conspiracy theories," saying American customers' data is stored in the U.S. and inaccessible to staff based in China or Hong Kong.

Airwallex raises $320m at an $11bn valuation, betting on agentic finance

The payments firm's valuation climbed 38% in six months as it pushes into software run by AI agents. A 38% jump in valuation over six months is the kind of figure that tells you where investor appetite has gone. Airwallex, the global payments company, has raised $320m in a Series H round that values it at $11bn, up from $8bn in December 2025. The raise is being directed squarely at the part of the market that now attracts the most capital: financial software run by AI agents. The round was led by returning investor Addition, with a long supporting cast that included Baillie Gifford, Hummingbird, QED Investors, T. Rowe Price, Hedosophia, Haun Ventures, Amex Ventures, and Washington University in St. Louis. The mix of crossover funds and a university endowment is the sort of investor list a company assembles when it is positioning for a public market rather than another private round. The underlying numbers explain the enthusiasm. As of March 2026, Airwallex reported $1.3bn in annualised revenue, up 74% year over year, and $287bn in annualised transaction volume, up more than 120%. Those are growth rates that justify a premium, and the company is spending the new money to defend them, with plans to expand its infrastructure and regulatory footprint into new markets and to keep building its engineering teams. The strategic pitch is agentic commerce, the idea that AI agents will increasingly transact on behalf of users and businesses, and that the payments rails underneath need to be built for software rather than people. It is a thesis the sector is converging on quickly, with firms such as Meow Technologies launching banking built for AI agents. Airwallex paired the raise with two new products aimed at the same idea: T:0, an autonomous finance platform, and Airi, which it describes as an agentic consumer wallet. The valuation history reads like a chart pointed in one direction. Airwallex raised $330m in a Series G at an $8bn valuation in December 2025, and the new round lifts that figure to $11bn barely six months later. Founded in Melbourne and now operating with a dual headquarters that includes San Francisco, the company has positioned itself as a cross-border payments and financial-infrastructure provider for businesses, the kind of plumbing that becomes more valuable as commerce moves online and across borders. It sits among a cohort of fintech firms rebuilding money movement from the rails up. The roster of returning and new backers signals where the money expects the company to go next. Crossover investors such as T. Rowe Price and Baillie Gifford typically take positions in late-stage private companies they expect to follow into the public markets, and the addition of Amex Ventures hints at the payments incumbents' interest in what Airwallex is building. The enthusiasm is selective: AI has crushed the valuations of pre-ChatGPT companies even as it lifts firms that can credibly attach themselves to the agentic story. None of this guarantees a listing, and the company has not signalled a timeline, but the shape of the cap table is the shape of a company being readied to be looked at by public investors. Whether autonomous agents move money at the scale the marketing implies is still unproven, and the phrase "agentic finance" is doing a lot of work across the sector right now. What is concrete is the capital, the valuation, and a revenue line growing fast enough to keep both rising. The next milestone to watch is whether that investor list points, as it appears to, toward an eventual listing.

Airwallex raises $320M at an $11bn valuation

Airwallex has raised $320M at an $11bn valuation, up from $8bn in December. The payments company is now pivoting to "autonomous finance" and AI agents that transact on your behalf. Airwallex has raised $320M at an $11bn valuation, up from $8bn in December. The payments company is now pivoting to "autonomous finance" and AI agents that transact on your behalf. Airwallex, the global payments platform, has raised $320m in a Series H round. The deal values the company at $11bn, up from $8bn in December 2025. Returning investor Addition led the round. That is a fast climb. Airwallex has lifted its valuation by $3bn in roughly six months. The new money arrives with a clear theme: the company wants to move from moving money to running finance itself, with AI doing the work. The investor list is deep. Alongside Addition, the round drew Baillie Gifford, Hummingbird, QED Investors, T. Rowe Price, Hedosophia, Haun Ventures, Washington University in St. Louis and Amex Ventures. It is a mix of crossover funds, fintech specialists and a crypto investor betting on agent payments. Airwallex says the cash will accelerate its push into autonomous finance, expand its regulatory footprint into new markets, and grow the teams building its AI-native financial software. The momentum behind the raise Airwallex is growing fast. In March 2026 it hit $1.3bn in annualised revenue, up 74% year on year. Annualised transaction volume reached $287bn, up more than 120%. The platform is also getting stickier. More than 90% of revenue now comes from customers using more than one Airwallex product. That cross-selling is what investors prize, because it lifts the value of each account over time. The scale is real. Airwallex serves more than 676,000 businesses worldwide, directly or through platform partners. Its products span payment acceptance, billing, global accounts, corporate cards and spend management. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, the company holds more than 85 licenses across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. It is co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with over 2,300 staff across 27 offices. From payments rails to a finance brain The pitch this round is not about payments alone. Airwallex says the licenses and settlement rails it spent ten years building are exactly what an AI-driven economy needs. Now it wants to build the intelligent layer on top. "We believe this is the most consequential moment in the history of global finance, and we are building accordingly," said Jack Zhang, co-founder and chief executive. "A decade ago, we did not know exactly what the agentic economy would look like, but we built a foundation for it." To make the point, the company unveiled two products. The first is T:0, an AI-native finance platform meant to run a company's entire finance function. It automates bookkeeping, forecasting, taxes, compliance and reporting from day zero. It is in private beta for now. The pitch for T:0 is blunt. Zhang wants founders to get "CFO-grade books" without hiring a finance team or migrating systems. It is a direct swing at the patchwork of tools that small companies usually stitch together. Airwallex has been buying that capability, too. Earlier in June it acquired Leapfin, a revenue-recognition and reconciliation platform, to turn raw transaction data into GAAP-ready financials. That deal feeds straight into T:0. The thinking traces back to a simple claim Zhang likes to repeat: the AI era has no home market. Small teams now go global from day one, often run by a handful of people and a stack of agents. Airwallex wants to be their finance department. A wallet for the agents The second product is Airi, an agentic consumer wallet. At launch it folds in Airwallex's one-click checkout, which the company says lifted successful checkout conversions by up to 14% in early testing. The bigger idea is what comes next. Airwallex plans for Airi to become wallet infrastructure for software agents that buy things for you. That means delegated payments, spend limits, permission controls and multi-currency balances, all on regulated rails. The logic is simple. When an AI agent transacts on your behalf, it needs a safe, global conduit to touch real money, whether fiat or stablecoins. Airwallex wants to be that conduit. The agentic commerce land grab Airwallex is not alone in this race. The fight to own the payment rail that AI agents use is now one of fintech's hottest contests. The biggest names are already moving. Stripe has adapted its Link wallet for agents and previewed stablecoin settlement for agent-to-agent payments. OpenAI has wired Visa into ChatGPT so its agents can shop and pay across millions of merchants. Mastercard, PayPal and Google are all building rival protocols. Smaller players are circling too. Meow Technologies has launched what it calls the first agentic banking platform for AI agents, with approval workflows baked in. The shared assumption is that agents will soon move money, and someone has to hold the keys. The money is following the thesis. Mastercard recently agreed to buy stablecoin firm BVNK for up to $1.8bn, and Stripe bought Bridge for $1.1bn last year. Big payment companies clearly expect agents and stablecoins to need new plumbing. Airwallex argues its edge is the boring part: regulation. Building 85 licenses and local settlement networks takes years, and agents need that compliance to transact at all. Lee Fixel of Addition made the same case, saying the winners will build "on top of real financial infrastructure, not around it." The bet The strategy carries risk. Airwallex is moving from a proven payments business into products that barely exist yet. T:0 is in beta, and the agentic wallet is mostly a roadmap. It is also crowded. Stripe is far larger, the card networks have global reach, and rivals like Revolut are pushing hard into business banking. Airwallex must turn its infrastructure lead into software people actually use. Still, the timing is bold. Airwallex spent a decade building rails for a borderless economy, and it is now betting that AI agents will be the heaviest users of those rails. Whether the agentic economy arrives fast enough to justify an $11bn price tag is the question this round leaves open. For now, the money is betting it will.

Fintech Airwallex secures $320 million in new funding round at $11 billion valuation

Fintech giant Airwallex has secured a significant $320 million funding round, valuing the company at $11 billion. This substantial investment, a nearly 38% increase from its last financing, will fuel global expansion and enhance its AI capabilities. The company also unveiled new products, including an automated bookkeeping platform and a consumer digital wallet, underscoring its aggressive growth strategy. Payments firm Airwallex said on Friday it raised $320 million at a valuation of $11 billion, marking a near 38% jump from its previous financing late last year, with eyes on expanding its global footprint and AI ⁠offerings. Here are ⁠some details: The funding brought Airwallex's total funding to $1.8 billion as of June, according to its website. "The investment will help Airwallex accelerate product development across autonomous finance and agentic commerce," the fintech firm said. Airwallex also announced two ⁠new product offerings: a platform automating bookkeeping and compliance for businesses, and a consumer digital ⁠wallet. Earlier in the year, the company acquired South Korea's Paynuri, securing local payments licences and a foreign-exchange business registration to operate directly in the country. In March, the company reached $1.3 billion in annualised revenue, up 74%, and $287 billion in annualised transaction volume, more than double the previous year. Airwallex, founded in Melbourne in 2015 and co-headquartered in ⁠San Francisco and Singapore, holds more than 85 licenses across continents and caters to more than 676,000 businesses, according to its statement. The latest round of funding was anchored by New York-based venture capital firms Addition, T. Rowe Price, and Hummingbird, among others.

Airwallex Focuses on Agentic Commerce as Valuation Hits $11 Billion | PYMNTS.com

This Series H round brings Airwallex's valuation to $11 billion, and will help it develop autonomous finance and agentic commerce and extend its infrastructure and regulatory presence into new markets, the company announced Thursday (June 25). "A decade ago, we did not know exactly what the agentic economy would look like, but we built a foundation for it," Airwallex Co-Founder and CEO Jack Zhang said in a statement. "The licenses, local network integrations and settlement rails we spent ten years constructing are precisely the kind of infrastructure it needs. This new capital lets us move faster into Airwallex's next chapter: autonomous finance, agentic commerce, and the infrastructure to power both." The new valuation is up from $8 billion in December when Airwallex raised $330 million. The company also raised $300 million in another round earlier in 2025, valuing it at $6.2 billion. In addition to the Series H, Airwallex also announced two product initiatives centered around autonomous finance and agentic commerce. T:0 is an "AI-native" financial platform that is "designed to run the full finance function of a business end to end," the release said. The platform -- currently in private beta with a wider release planned in the weeks ahead -- automates bookkeeping, forecasting, taxes, compliance and reporting, and aims to give founders "CFO-grade books with compliance built in and no migration required." Also announced Thursday was Airi, Airwallex's "agentic consumer wallet," which features the company's one-click checkout capability, with plans to eventually include features like "delegated agent payments, spend limits, permission controls and multi-currency balances." In other agentic commerce news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this month about new research showing that although consumers are embracing AI-enabled commerce tools, most remain uneasy about turning over final decision-making authority in higher-stakes scenarios. According to the May 2026 Consumer AI Benchmark from PYMNTS Intelligence, tasks centered around discovery, comparison shopping and information gathering have all become natural fits for AI. But consumers sought greater demand for human oversight in tasks involving payments, financial commitments and irreversible decisions. "The findings suggest that the next phase of AI adoption will depend less on the sophistication of the technology itself and more on whether businesses can calibrate the balance between automation and human control," PYMNTS wrote.