Unicorn Company from the banking sector and creator of innovation points received substantial financial support.
The online bank N26 and the nreal headset using mixed reality became objects of multi-million investments. The first service immediately attracted $ 300 million from venture investors, and the developer of “smart” points – 15.
N26 has already captured Europe and is preparing to enter the American market.
The next investment round for the bank N26 was even more profitable than the early ones. The leaders in investing in the project, which in 2018 was estimated at $ 1 billion, were the investment company Insight Venture Partners and the sovereign wealth fund GIC from Singapore. In total, they provided N26 about 300 million dollars. In 2018, the online bank raised another 160 million. Thus, his estimate in 2019 reached 2.6 billion dollars.
N26 is a new FinTech service operating in the banking sector. It allows you to quickly open an account to which the debit card is entitled. Like most of these projects, the N26 operates in the online field and has no physical departments. At the same time, the number of bank employees exceeds 700 people and they are located in Barcelona, Berlin and New York. The bank is already represented in 24 European countries, and over 2 million customers use its services. The head of the service, Valentin Stalf, announced that in 2019 he would start working in the USA.
Profit N26 receives at the expense of commissions from transfer between cards, through the sale of premium accounts, the issuance of consumer loans, overdrafts and the provision of other financial services.
Nreal – glasses from a former Magic Leap employee
Good news shared startup nreal, creating ultra-light mixed reality glasses. The founder of the project Xu Chi in the past was the developer of the company Magic Leap, which also produces its own options for points and for 9 years of its existence attracted more than $ 2 billion in investments.
The results of nreal are still modest – the project received 15 million from the founder of Xiaomi and the largest online store in China, Baidu. However, the company’s competitive advantages in the future may provide it with much more significant financial support.
The weight of nreal glasses is only 85 grams, which slightly exceeds the mass of traditional sunglasses, but is much lighter than a similar product from other market players: Microsoft’s HoloLens and Magic Leap. In addition, there are fewer cameras and sensors in the nreal light glasses than competitors are, but the image quality is not lost.
The headset developers claim that nreal light provides realistic interaction between digital avatars and the real world thanks to simultaneous localization and mapping algorithms, known as SLAM. It builds an environmental map and allows you to interact with virtual and real objects using minimal computational power.
