N26

N26 is a mobile-only retail bank operating in about two dozen European countries. Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal founded it in Berlin in August 2013 as Papayer GmbH, which launched a prepaid card for teenagers in 2014 before renaming to Number26 and pivoting to a general current account. It ran on Wirecard's backend until July 2016, when it received its own banking license from the German regulator BaFin, and it says it was the first fully mobile bank to operate with a full German license.

After about 2 million euros of seed money in 2014, N26 raised a $10.6 million Series A in April 2015 led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, with existing investors Earlybird and Redalpine participating. Horizons Ventures led a $40 million Series B in June 2016, joined by Battery Ventures with Valar, Earlybird and Redalpine reinvesting. Tencent and Allianz X led a $160 million Series C in March 2018. Insight Venture Partners led a $300 million Series D in January 2019 with Singapore's GIC, at a $2.7 billion valuation, and existing backers including Insight, GIC, Tencent, Allianz X, Valar, Earlybird and Greyhound Capital added $170 million in July 2019 at $3.5 billion. A further $100 million extension in May 2020 brought total funding to $770 million. In October 2021 Third Point and Coatue led a $900 million round with Dragoneer at a $9 billion valuation, taking the total to roughly $1.7 billion.

The company has struggled since that peak. It left the UK in 2020 and the US in January 2022, closing about 500,000 American accounts. BaFin fined it 4.25 million euros in 2021 over anti-money laundering failures and capped new customer growth until June 2024; Italy barred new customers in 2022; and in 2025 BaFin threatened further sanctions. Stalf stepped down as co-CEO in August 2025, Tayenthal left operational roles at the end of 2025, and Mike Dargan was appointed sole CEO, joining in April 2026. N26 had 7 million customers in 2021 and remains private.

N26 shows the distance between a growth-round mark and an exit. Valar and Earlybird entered at the Series A in 2015, but six years later the company's value was set by crossover investors at $9 billion, and regulatory remediation has since delayed an IPO. Early backers hold paper gains on a business that has narrowed its geographic footprint, with no liquidity event more than a decade after founding.