Funding & Investment in Travel
SA travel startup TurnStay raises R34m to expand across Africa

South African fintech startup TurnStay has raised over R34m in a seed funding round to scale its cross-border payments platform for the travel and tourism industry. The round was led by First Circle Capital, with participation from investors including TLCom Capital, Enza Capital, Incisive Ventures, CVVC, and Equitable Ventures.
Turnstay founders Alon Stern and James Hedley | image supplied
Tackling cross-border payment inefficiencies
TurnStay helps African travel operators overcome common barriers like high card fees, failed international payments and long settlement delays.
The platform uses a merchant-of-record model and stablecoin settlement to reduce costs and speed up payments. TurnStay says this can lower transaction fees by up to 70% and improve booking conversion rates.
Founded by fintech operators Alon Stern (formerly Prodigy Finance) and James Hedley (Quicket co-founder), the Cape Town-based startup integrates with popular booking and property management systems.
“This funding represents a major milestone in our mission to make global payment infrastructure accessible to African travel businesses,” said Stern.
Growth plans
TurnStay plans to use the funding to expand into key African markets and further develop its payments infrastructure for the travel sector. Tourism supports more than six million jobs in Africa and generates over R1.8tn annually, but high payment costs continue to constrain growth for local operators.
The startup aims to offer a more competitive alternative to traditional payment providers and global booking platforms by giving African businesses access to the same fintech tools used by international players.
Local operators gain more control
TurnStay’s model allows local travel businesses to settle in rands while accepting payments from international customers. It also enables more direct bookings by bypassing global online travel agents, which typically charge high commissions.
“Our solution consistently delivers cost savings while improving the booking experience for international travellers,” said COO James Hedley.
The company says it has processed over R250m in transactions since raising R5.7m in a pre-seed round last year. It has also secured partnerships with several industry players.
Funding & Investment in Travel
Fintech Startup Rillet Lands $70M Series B From a16z, Iconiq Just 12 Weeks After Last Raise

Fintech Rillet announced Wednesday that it’s raised $70 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Capital.
Notably, the financing comes just 12 weeks after the Palo Alto, California-based startup raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital, which also participated in the latest raise alongside Oak HC/FT and earlier backers. The 4-year-old company has now raised over $108.5 million over the past year. While Rillet did not disclose valuation, a source familiar with the deal told Reuters that it is around $500 million.
Co-founded by Nicolas Kopp, former U.S. CEO of N26, Rillet describes itself as an AI-native ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning software, built for CFOs and accounting teams at high-growth companies. It integrates with hundreds of tools across the tech stack and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate critical accounting workflows, such as accruals, bank reconciliations, revenue recognition and investor reporting.
“It was timely doing the Series B so quickly,” Kopp told Crunchbase News. “Revenue has doubled in the 12 weeks since Series A and this new round was pre-emptive — so it made sense to do it now to fuel the fire and all.”
Rillet works with over 200 companies, he said, declining to reveal hard revenue figures. Customers include Postscript, Finch, Laurel, Lang AI and Windsurf.
As part of the financing, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Alex Rampell and Iconiq general partner Seth Pierrepont are joining Rillet’s board.
“In our view, Rillet is not just modernizing accounting software, it’s redefining what finance teams can achieve when freed from outdated systems,” said Pierrepont in a written statement. “Their AI-native approach can give companies a clear edge: faster insights, leaner teams, and smarter decisions.”
Looking ahead, Rillet plans to expand its AI capabilities and deepen integrations across the financial technology stack. Its goal is to build “a collaborative platform where AI agents and human expertise work together to transform how businesses understand and manage their financial performance.”
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Funding & Investment in Travel
Startup Funding Stays Flat, But Figma IPO Lights A Spark In The Market

Global venture funding totaled $29.7 billion in July 2025, flat year over year and down month over month from the $43 billion invested in June, Crunchbase data shows.
Despite a month-over-month dip in venture dollars, July offered hopeful signs for startup investors: AI remains a funding juggernaut, and Figma’s stellar IPO performance could be the catalyst needed to unlock the public markets for dozens of high-growth, revenue-generating tech unicorns that have been waiting in the wings.
By stage, 10% of venture funding last month was invested in seed-stage companies, around 30% in early-stage deals, and 60% in late-stage rounds. Funding also continued to concentrate in larger rounds, with corporate and private equity leading the majority of deals at $200 million and over.
Overall, for the first seven months of the year, global venture funding has increased by 23%, driven by large billion-dollar-plus funding rounds to the AI sector, Crunchbase data shows.
The biggest news last month for the venture world was the blockbuster Figma IPO, which priced at $33 and climbed to more than 3x its IPO price by the end of the first day of trading, making the San Francisco-based design collaboration startup arguably the biggest tech brand to debut since 2022. As a 13-year-old company, established in an earlier technology wave, Figma was able to grow revenue alongside the shift to AI.
The successful debut could spur more tech IPOs, especially for companies which have been waiting on the sidelines and are still growing, have significant revenue and are profitable or close to profitable.
AI took the biggest rounds
The largest startup funding round in July went to xAI — a $5 billion investment led by another Elon Musk company, SpaceX.
That deal was also the third-largest funding this year, behind only OpenAI’s $40 billion SoftBank-led round announced in March, and Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI in June.
Large rounds of $200 million or more totaled $11.4 billion in July, or around 38% of private financing to venture-backed companies. These larger rounds were led predominantly by corporate entities, private equity and alternative investors. OpenEvidence and Lovable were the only two rounds above $200 million led solely by venture capital firms.
U.S. and AI led
The U.S. continued to dominate startup funding in July, raising $17 billion — or 58% of global venture investment, Crunchbase data shows.
AI accounted for 37% of funding in July, totaling $11 billion and remaining the leading industry for funding, followed by healthcare and biotech at $5.7 billion. Funding to financial services was $4.6 billion last month, doubling from a year earlier.
Unicorns waiting to exit
The Figma IPO represented a big win for its startup investors, which included, respectively, seed through Series C lead investors Index Ventures, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital — each of which earned billions in exit value, enough to return multiple funds.
However, with $1 trillion of capital invested in more than 1,600 unicorn-valued companies, a lot of value remains locked up in private companies that still need an exit path.
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data reported is as of Aug. 4, 2025.
Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.
Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.
Glossary of funding terms
Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.
Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.
Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.
Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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Funding & Investment in Travel
AI-Powered Sales Automation Startup Clay More Than Doubles Valuation To $3.1B

Sales automation startup Clay has raised $100 million in a Series C round of funding that more than doubles the company’s valuation to $3.1 billion, the company told Crunchbase News on Tuesday.
Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG, led the round. Existing backers Meritech Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, BoxGroup and Boldstart Ventures, as well as new investor Sapphire Ventures, also participated.
Notably, the financing comes just six months after New York-based Clay announced it had secured $40 million at a $1.25 billion valuation in a Series B extension led by Meritech Capital.
In May, Clay completed a tender offer led by Sequoia at a $1.5 billion valuation. The latest infusion brings Clay’s total raised to $204 million since its 2017 inception. The company told Crunchbase News that it “hasn’t touched” the last round it raised.
Clay’s platform aims to “transform” traditional sales and marketing operations, building automated workflows that it says can research thousands of prospects, personalize outreach at scale, and identify revenue opportunities “that would be impossible to find manually.”
It integrates with more than 150 data sources, and its AI agents can perform research tasks such as monitoring competitor mentions to trigger personalized campaigns, or analyzing satellite imagery to count warehouse parking spots as a predictor of customer fit.
The company also claims to have developed something it calls a “GTM (go-to-market) engineering role.”
“GTM engineering represents the first true AI-native profession, and we believe that it will be tech’s next big job category,” said Kareem Amin, CEO and co-founder of Clay, in a written statement. Amin originally founded Clay and was joined by co-founder Varun Anand in 2021.
Anand told Crunchbase News via email that Clay first coined the role of GTM engineering in 2023.
“GTM engineers combine growth acumen with AI and automation to build revenue engines. We call it ‘engineering’ because they work within certain parameters to build scaled systems — but instead of coding software, they’re coding revenue,” he said.
Clay raised another round to fuel the growth of GTM engineering and make “major” product upgrades, including autonomous agents for research and messaging, the ability to use first-party data, and better signals, according to Anand.
While Clay did not disclose hard revenue figures, it notes that its revenue is “on track to more than triple this year.” The company’s 10,000-plus customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Canva, Intercom and Rippling.
For its part, Capital G said in a blog post that over the past 18 months, it spoke with more than 100 sales and marketing leaders, studied past approaches to the sales and marketing stack, and projected how AI would change go-to-market. Its goal was to develop its perspective on the next era of go-to-market technology.
“Ultimately that work culminated in our deep conviction that Clay will become the de facto go-to-market platform for the AI era,” wrote Jane Alexander — who previously served as CMO of Carta — and Capital G investor Will Noddings.
“For decades GTM teams have had to deal with a suite of point solutions that chip away at pain points but in aggregate created a Frankenstein’s monster of disconnected tools,” they added. “For the first time, Clay gives revenue teams a single platform from which they can launch any campaign, limited only by their imaginations.”
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
Photo courtesy of Ava Pellor via Clay.
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