Drew Durbin’s Wave becomes Africa’s latest tech unicorn after $200-million Series-A funding round

U.S. and Senegalese mobile money platform Wave has raised a $200-million Series-A funding round valued at $1.7 billion, ushering it among Africa’s tech unicorns.

TechCrunch reported the investment as the largest-ever Series-A funding round raised by an Africa-based startup.

The investment was led by top Sequoia Heritage, a subsidiary of the Sequoia brand, Founders Fund, Stripe and Ribbit Capital.

Other existing investors that partook in the round include Partech Africa and Sam Altman (the former CEO of Y Combinator and the current CEO of OpenAI).

Wave was co-founded in 2018 by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk, who also co-founded Sendwave, an Africa-focused digital remittance provider.

Wave aims to bridge the financial inclusion gap on the continent, as it moves “to build a better, much more affordable mobile money service than the telecoms are building throughout much of Sub-Saharan Africa,” Durbin was quoted as saying.

The latest fund will drive the company’s expansion plan across the region, which holds an over 50-percent unbanked adult population.

In a statement, Altman said he was super-impressed with the founders’ ability to figure out what users want and how to grow. “I think the company is solving the most important problem around money transfer in Africa and fixing the inefficient agent networks,” he said.

Sendwave

Ismail Ahmed, Somaliland billionaire and founder of Africa’s largest remittance channel, WorldRemit, bought Sendwave for $500 million in cash and stock.

The app is a secured platform that guarantees money transfers from North America and Europe to numerous countries in Africa and Asia.

Following the acquisition, the duo channeled their resources into developing Wave, a spinoff from Sendwave.