This Atlanta tech startup raised $29 million in a matter of weeks
In just two years, Joshua Silver has seen the fortunes of his financial technology startup, Rainforest, skyrocket, raising nearly $58 million over that short span of time.
In 2023, the fledgling company raised $8.5 million in equity seed funding. Less than a year later, investors poured in $20 million in a Series A round. Now, Rainforest said Monday those same funders have invested another $29 million in what’s known as a Series B round, in which a company has matured well beyond the startup phase.
“We weren’t planning to raise the Series B quite this early, as we still have a lot of the Series A cash in the bank, but we’ve just seen such great demand for our services that we decided to accelerate it so that we could continue to invest in the team and invest in the product,” Silver told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Silver, a Georgia Tech graduate who had previously built and then sold a health care payments company, founded Rainforest in early 2022. His business helps software companies improve their offerings to clients by allowing them to embed payment processing directly into their product.
This latest investment came together in a matter of weeks, Silver said, acknowledging the latest round was “unusually quick,” but said the company’s growth over the past year exceeded expectations and that now was the time to “put our foot on the gas and grow.”
Last June, the company had a few dozen clients, but now nearly 100 software platforms across a variety of industries, including education, nonprofits, local governments and health care, use Rainforest to process their payments, Silver said.
That means Rainforest’s revenue has increased, too, because it makes money when its clients make money. The company takes a percentage of all the transactions processed by software companies that integrate its platform.
Rainforest is an emerging company within a huge industry for Georgia, which is a global payments processing hub. Financial technology companies employ more than 40,000 people in the state, according to the American Transaction Processors Coalition, an industry trade group.
Rainforest’s success in attracting investors comes amid a difficult fundraising climate nationally.
When asked if Rainforest was profitable, Silver said the company “is continuing to invest in our growth, and we’re putting every dollar we make right back into growth right now.”
Rainforest has also used its investments to grow its team. Last June there were about 24 employees, and now that figure is nearly 40.
Only previous investors participated in the Series B round, led by two San Francisco-based venture firms, Infinity Ventures and Matrix Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested in startups like buy now, pay later platform Afterpay. Atlanta’s own Tech Square Ventures has invested in Rainforest in all three rounds.
Silver said he plans to hire as part of this new $29 million tranche of funding. He’s looking to grow customer-facing teams as well as the research and development team, which is entirely based at Rainforest’s office in the Atlanta Tech Village.
“We do have an Atlanta-first mentality from a hiring perspective, especially around product and engineering, and that’s been a key to our success and being able to fill that talent pipeline.” Silver said. “There’s just so much good payments and fintech talent here in Atlanta.”
With the Series B, Rainforest also plans to expand its product to Canada, its first international market, as well as add the capacity for alternative payment methods and tap-to-phone.
“When investors are writing such large checks, they have a whole lot of questions about what’s the ultimate outcome of the company going to be,” Silver explained. “We really took a step back and looked at ourselves in the mirror and said, ‘You know, are we ready to build this out to be a truly generational company?’ And I think every sign from the market, sign from our team, sign from investors, is pointing in that direction.”
About the Author
Mirtha Donastorg is a reporter on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s business team focusing on Black wealth, entrepreneurship, and minority-owned businesses as well as innovation at Atlanta’s HBCUs.
