Deel, a fintech that provides a payroll solution for employees and contractors globally, has raised $156 million in a Series C round, lifting the company to unicorn status with a $1.25 billion valuation.
The round was led by YC Continuity and co-led by existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital. The company’s Series C round brings its total funding to date to over $200 million, according to a blog post by Deel’s Co-founder and CEO Alex Bouaziz.
Deel has helped over 1,800 companies with its platform that aims to make it easier for businesses to hire internationally, adhere to compliance and provide payments. Deel has scaled its team from a start up of 7 in January 2020 to more than 120 employees across 30 countries today.
The startup’s various features include Deel Card, Equipment, Advance, for Employees, and has added 120+ currencies.
“As we expanded and hired excellent people everywhere, we also ended the year 20x-ing our growth with more than 1,800 companies, ranging from small businesses to publicly traded ones,” the blog post read. Although it did not further specify what exact growth metric it was referring to.
The company has also tapped Ali Rowghani, Managing Director of Y Combinator to its board of directors. Rowghani has an impressive resume previously serving as Twitter’s COO and Pixar’s CFO.
Going forward, the company aims to open about 80 more “Deel-owned entities before 2022.” The startup also plans to hire more employees but didn’t specify how many more.
“Making Deel the best it can be is always a top priority. We’ll ship new features faster. For example, the ability to grant equity globally and opening our Deel API,” Bouaziz said in the post. “We’ll also create more robust capabilities, like global salary insights, that didn’t exist before all while continuing to help every business turn hiring hurdles into ramps.”
In other recent payroll startup news, with a cash infusion of $5 million, fintech startup Wage plans to pay wages to a bigger workforce.