After calling off its plans to go public via a SPAC at a $10.4 billion valuation in 2022, trading platform eToro has secured $250 million in funding at a $3.5 billion valuation.
The money is not a typical equity round: it comes by way of an Advanced Investment Agreement (AIA), eToro founder and CEO Yoni Assia told TechCrunch. The company had secured the AIA in early 2021 as a kind of backstop from current backers in the event that its proposed SPAC fell through. Investors include ION Group, Social Leverage, SoftBank and Spark Capital.
An AIA is an agreement where an investor (or investors in this case) pay in advance for shares that will be allocated at a later date, sometimes at a discount, according to Ken Smythe, founder and CEO of Next Round Capital Partners — a capital markets and VC secondaries firm. The company came to an agreeme...
