French Fintech Lydia Attains Unicorn Status With $100M Series C Funding

French fintech Lydia has raised $100 million in Series C funding, attaining unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion.

• The funding round includes new investors Dragoneers and Echo Street along with existing backers Tencent, Accel and Founders Future.
• Lydia recently allowed its 5.5 million users to invest in digital assets including crypto and fractional stocks in partnership with Austrian exchange Bitpanda.
• The firm raised $131 million in two funding rounds last year and offers a range of services, including current accounts, express loans, mobile payments and investments through its app.
• Lydia told CoinDesk it plans to use the fresh funding to hire 800 more staff over the next three years (including 160 in 2022) and expand its customer base to 10 million by 2025.

Read more: Crypto Exchange Bitpanda Raises $263M at $4.1B Valuation

UPDATE (Dec. 8, 13:56 UTC): Updated with information from Lydia in fourth bullet point.