Berlin’s Trade Republic nabs $900M led by Sequoia at a $5B+ valuation to take its neo-broker app across Europe

Consumers are moving into investing to complement — or in some cases, offset — less good returns from things like traditional savings accounts with low interest rates or pensions, and today one of the bigger “neo-brokers” in Europe helping to open up that opportunity is announcing a monster round of funding to fuel its growth.

Trade Republic, which lets people buy and sell shares, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), derivatives and (most recently) cryptocurrency by way of a mobile app that does not charge commissions (but does have a fee structure for various services), has raised $900 million in a Series C round of funding that values the Berlin startup at $5.3 billion, the startup confirmed.

The round has a very strong bench of investors behind it. It is being led by Sequoia, with new backers TCV and Thrive Capital, as well as previous backers Accel, Founders Fund, Creandum and Project A, also participating. Accel and Founders Fund co-led Trade Republic’s Series B a year ago.

The investment catapults the Berlin-based startup into being one of the biggest privately-held fintech businesses in the region, and while Trade Republic is currently only active in Germany, Austria and France, Christian Hecker (who co-founded the company with Marco Cancellieri and Thomas Pischke) said the startup will be using the funds to expand to many more countries (which will include not just sorting out licenses to do so, but implementing larger regional operations, hence the large round of funding).

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