Klarna: buy now, pay 85% less a year later

Klarna is no longer Europe’s most valuable private fintech, with the hire-purchase 3.0 provider’s latest funding round arriving at a $6.7bn pre-money valuation versus $46bn just over a year ago.

They seem to be taking it well though, judging by the press release:

The unavoidable event here is that Klarna’s has closed an $800mn funding round. Mubadala, the UAE SWF, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board came in with new money. Existing investors including Sequoia provided unquantified “strong backing” to the cash incinerator:

Michael Moritz, Partner at Sequoia commented: “The shift in Klarna’s valuation is entirely due to investors suddenly voting in the opposite manner to the way they voted for the past few years.”

Yep, that would explain it.