General Catalyst has decided it wants exposure to Factorial in two ways at once. The Barcelona software company has closed a $150M Series D led by the firm at a $2.5bn valuation, and General Catalyst is committing a further $540M through a separate vehicle that ties its return to the value Factorial creates for customers rather than to equity. It is an unusual structure, and it makes the firm both a shareholder and something closer to a financing partner.
The equity round itself lands Factorial among the most valuable AI scale-ups in Europe and marks General Catalyst’s first equity cheque into the company, joined by Atomico and Four Rivers.
The valuation is up from the roughly $2bn the company was reported to be discussing in funding talks as recently as March, a brisk re-rating over a single quarter.
Factorial was founded in 2016 by Jordi Romero, Bernat Farrero and Pau Ramon Revilla, and built its business selling HR software to small and mid-sized companies. It now serves more than 16,000 businesses across 90 countries, employs around 2,600 people, and says it is hiring up to 50 staff a week, the kind of growth rate that tends to either justify a valuation or strain a company trying to live up to one.
