Float has secured €4.5 million in Series A funding to tackle a persistent problem plaguing European startups: access to growth capital without surrendering equity or relocating to the United States.
The Stockholm-based fintech, founded in 2022, provides revenue-based financing, credit lines, and non-dilutive growth capital to B2B SaaS and subscription businesses. Its latest round, led by Hamburg’s CHAPTERS Group AG, signals a strategic shift. CHAPTERS typically pursues majority acquisitions across its portfolio of roughly 60 vertical market software firms. Backing Float as a minority investment marks a rare departure from that playbook.
CHAPTERS CEO Jan-Hendrik Mohr will join Float’s board. The firm’s largest shareholders include Daniel Ek’s family office and Danaher founder Mitch Rales.
Float plans to use the fresh capital to double headcount and expand its UK presence, already its largest market. The company also intends to leverage its new investor relationship to enter the M&A arena.
Meanwhile, the funding arrives at a precarious moment for European tech. According to the Centre for Economic Policy Research, venture capital deployment across Europe reached just €66 billion in 2025, roughly one-fifth of US levels. That imbalance pushes founders to either dilute heavily or relocate entirely.
Float’s ambitions extend beyond lending. The company will evolve toward an AI-native financial platform, integrating live bank account and accounting system access to automate payments, expense management, and financial analysis. Lending remains the core business, but the expanded toolkit aims to streamline how founders manage company finances.
CEO and co-founder Cedric Notz described banking as stubbornly localized and bogged down by manual bureaucracy, forcing tech companies into a brutal choice between giving away equity or leaving for America. COO and CFO Jannis Koehn framed the CHAPTERS investment as validation of Float’s financial reliability and a foundation for becoming Europe’s go-to startup financial partner.
The numbers support that trajectory. Float has funded over 130 European tech companies, deploying more than €100 million in three years. Revenue has grown more than 100% year-over-year since founding, and the company reached profitability on a net income basis this year.
With US firms 40% more likely to secure venture capital within their first five years, and 10% of EU scaleups relocating abroad per the Draghi report, Float’s expansion positions it directly against that migration trend.
