neon raises CHF 11 million with institutional investors and crowdinvesting campaign

26.10.2022 09:40, Morgane Ghilardi

Within just a day, neon exceeded its first funding goal with its latest crowdinvesting campaign. With the additional funding, the challenger bank hopes to break even soon. Neon was named one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups by experts and investors every year from 2020 to 2022.

After raising capital in a financing round with institutional investors, the challenger bank launched an equity crowdfunding campaign with tokenized non-voting shares in June of 2021, allowing its users to partake in the company's growth.

In September 2022, the fintech startup reached another capital increase of CHF 2.5 million with institutional investors, before inviting private investors to the table once again. Investors can acquire tokenized, non-voting shares until the end of the month. On the first day of the campaign, almost 2,800 people pledged a sum of over CHF 6 million. By the end of the campaign, neon secured a total of CHF 8.6 million from 5,000 crows investors.

Once again, the average investment amount is well above the minimum investment amount. The valuation is the same for the investment of the major investors and the crowd, namely around CHF 70 million. 

With 130,000 customers, the startup has achieved considerable growth since its launch founding in 2019. It surpassed 2021's turnover of CHF 3.5 million in August.  

Having focused on maximizing its customer base and revenue growth, the startup is now aiming to break even with the increase in capital. To reach the profit threshold, neon intends to expand its functionalities; it plans to introduce share and cryptocurrency trading in 2023. Julius Kirscheneder and his co-founders are also focusing on partnerships, e.g. with frankly and, most recently, with watch manufacturer Swatch and the new SwatchPay functionality.

The fintech startup was voted one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups by experts and investors every year since 2020. neon also won the TOP 100 Public Vote in 2020, which runs parallel to the expert jury ranking and allows the public—everyone with a LinkedIn account can cast one vote—to choose the most promising startup.


Neon co-founder Jörg Sandrock at the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Awards in 2020

(Source: startupticker.ch/VL)