BlueVine Adds $12M From M12 To Round Of Funding

BlueVine, the FinTech startup that recently announced a $60 million round of financing, has added $12 million to its Series E round of funding from M12, Microsoft’s venture capital fund.

According to a report in VentureBeat, the $12 million brings BlueVine’s total Series E round of funding to $72 million. In June, the company announced it had raised $60 million in a round of funding that was led by Menlo Ventures and includes new investors such as SVB Capital. All major existing investors also participated in the round, the company said.

BlueVine said at the time that the new financing will go to support its plan to expand its invoice factoring and business line of credit products, and to explore new product categories that cater to small and medium-sized businesses. The company said it will also use some of the proceeds from the funding to pick up the pace of research and development hiring.

Founded in 2013, BlueVine is one of the leading FinTech players in online small business lending. The company’s total funded volume since inception is expected to top $1 billion in 2018. According to VentureBeat, BlueVine has raised about $590 million since its inception, with about three-quarters coming during 2018. In May, noted the report, it announced a $200 million revolving credit facility with Credit Suisse.

“The company’s [BlueVine] market traction to date has been impressive, and we believe their technology and talent have set them on the path for continued growth,” said M12 Partner Elliott Robinson in the report. “We look forward to seeing what they do next.”

The landscape in SMB lending is almost totally unrecognizable from what it was even a short five years ago, BlueVine Founder and CEO Eyal Lifshitz told Karen Webster shortly after his firm’s latest $60 million funding round was announced. Though most of today’s businesses are comfortable and familiar with borrowing from an online lender, that would have been the territory of early adopters just five years ago. Most businesses still looked to banks, despite the fact that in the wake of the financial crisis and subsequent credit crunch, lending from banks more or less ground to a halt where SMBs were concerned. But as SMBs nationwide continued to need access to credit, a half-decade ago was a great time to start a small business lending firm.

“We’ve really seen the industry mature,” Lifshitz observed. “A few years ago, we saw a lot of small firms experimenting in this space, and there was a ton of money poured into the segment.”