Dive Brief:

• London-based Thought Machine raised $200 million in a recent Series C funding round led by Nyca Partners, which included funding from JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, Standard Chartered Ventures, ING Ventures and Lloyds Banking Group, the company announced Monday.
• The fintech startup helps banks transition from legacy technology to cloud-based platforms. The most recent funding will be put toward the development of Vault, the fintech’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) product.
• Thought Machine partnered with JPMorgan Chase in late September to overhaul the core banking system of the firm’s U.S. retail network.

Dive Insight:

Thought Machine was founded in 2014 by Paul Taylor, a former Google engineer, with the goal of enabling banks to modernize traditional IT platforms. The fintech caters to legacy and challenger banks looking to enter the cloud with the firm’s flagship SaaS offering, the cloud-native core banking platform Vault.

JPMorgan committed in September to moving its U.S. retail bank operations onto the Thought Machine platform, according to AltFi.  

"JPMorgan Chase represents one of the most ambitious, powerful financial institutions in the world — and our joint work signals to the finance industry that cloud native core banking technology is the future for financial services," Thought Machine CEO Paul Taylor told AltFi in September. "We are delighted to be working with JPMorgan Chase on this project, delivering modern core technology to the bank, and powering the next generation of financial services in North America."

Thought Machine’s list of clients also includes Lloyds, Standard Chartered, Swedish bank SEB and neobank Atom Bank.

The company has a team of more than 500, located in offices across London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, Australia and Melbourne, Australia. It has seen rapid growth, adding more than 200 employees since 2020 and relocating to a larger headquarters in London.

Taylor told CNBC he thinks Thought Machine is likely to go public in about three years.

Thought Machine raised $83 million in its Series B funding round last year, and has now raised more than $340 million total. After the latest funding round, Thought Machine has earned the title of a unicorn — a private startup valued at greater than $1 billion.

Thought Machine said the $200 million will be invested into the further development of Vault, and specifically its Universal Product Engine (UPE). According to Taylor, the UPE allows banks to run all of the products of a retail bank on one platform instead of using separate silos for mortgages, credit cards and other products.

Vault software uses financial APIs to help clients like Chase offer embedded banking to make banking infrastructure more scalable and to reduce running costs, according to TechCrunch.

"We are delighted to have earned the support of our new and existing investors as we continue to move the world’s leading banks into the cloud," Taylor said. "We set out to eradicate legacy technology from the industry and ensure that all banks deployed on Vault can succeed and deliver on their ambitions. These new funds will accelerate the delivery of Vault into banks around the world who wish to implement their future vision of financial services."