Qupital lands $300 million in new capital to expand AI-driven trade finance

Qupital, a Hong Kong-based fintech that provides AI-driven trade financing for cross-border e-commerce sellers, announced $300 million in new capital commitments, split between a Series C equity round and additional asset-backed securities financing.

The equity portion was led by M Capital, while the asset-backed securities commitments — financing structured against Qupital's existing pool of trade-finance receivables rather than raised as straight equity — came from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and Quester Capital. Combining an equity raise with ABS commitments is a common structure for lending-oriented fintechs, since it pairs growth capital for the business itself with a separate, larger pool of capital the company can actually lend back out to customers.

Qupital said it will use the funds to scale its financing capacity for e-commerce sellers across China, the United States, Japan and Southeast Asia, expand the AI risk-underwriting engine it uses to evaluate borrowers, and explore future capital-markets opportunities, including a potential IPO.

Trade finance — advancing capital against invoices, purchase orders or inventory so a merchant does not have to wait out a supplier's or buyer's payment terms — has drawn a wave of fintech entrants over the past several years betting that traditional banks move too slowly and too conservatively to serve smaller cross-border sellers. Qupital's pitch centers on using automated underwriting to assess sellers' real-time sales and marketplace data rather than relying solely on the credit history a conventional trade-finance lender would require.

Neither Qupital nor its investors disclosed a valuation alongside the announcement, so the round's implied pricing is not yet public.