Our Investments

Portfolio

14 companies across payments, credit, compliance, embedded finance, and treasury. Seed-stage investments in European markets building for global scale.

14
Portfolio Companies
6
European Markets
EUR 48M
Follow-on Raised
3
Exits to Date
Active Investments

Current Portfolio

Clearlex
Open Banking Infrastructure — Berlin, Germany

Clearlex

Next-generation open banking API aggregator connecting over 400 European financial institutions. Clearlex powers payment initiation and real-time data access for neobanks and fintech platforms across seven markets.

Seed — EUR 3.5MJanuary 2025
VaultEdge
B2B Treasury — Amsterdam, Netherlands

VaultEdge

Automated treasury and cash management platform for high-growth European companies. VaultEdge aggregates multi-bank balances, automates FX hedging, and provides real-time liquidity forecasting across currencies.

Seed — EUR 2.8MJanuary 2025
Nexara
Credit AI — Paris, France

Nexara

AI-powered credit decisioning engine for SME lenders. Nexara uses alternative data signals — cash flow, behavioural patterns, supply chain metadata — to score thin-file borrowers with 40% lower default rates than incumbent models.

Seed — EUR 4.2MFebruary 2025
Payloom
Embedded Finance — London, UK

Payloom

Embedded finance middleware enabling any software platform to offer payment accounts, cards, and credit products. Payloom's BaaS layer is certified for use across EEA under a passported e-money licence.

Seed — EUR 3.1MFebruary 2025
Stelio
Cross-Border FX — Stockholm, Sweden

Stelio

Real-time FX infrastructure for European SMEs trading cross-border. Stelio provides sub-millisecond execution, pre-hedging algorithms, and a multi-currency wallet API used by over 2,200 businesses across Scandinavia and the UK.

Seed — EUR 2.5MJanuary 2025
Finova
RegTech — Dublin, Ireland

Finova

Automated compliance orchestration platform for EMIs, payment institutions, and neobanks. Finova's continuous monitoring engine ingests regulatory updates in real time, mapping them automatically to policy documentation and control frameworks.

Seed — EUR 3.8MFebruary 2025
Partnership Network

Our Co-Investors

We co-invest alongside leading global funds who bring complementary networks and domain expertise

Khosla Ventures

Estes Capital has an active co-investment relationship with Khosla Ventures, one of the world's leading deep-technology venture funds. The partnership allows our portfolio companies to access Khosla's global network, technical expertise, and US market relationships as they scale.

Investment Criteria

We invest at the seed stage in European fintech infrastructure companies. A typical Estes Capital investment features the following characteristics:

Cheque Size

EUR 500K – EUR 2.5M

Initial seed investment, with pro-rata rights and reserve capital for follow-on rounds. We typically represent 10–20% of a seed round.

Stage

Pre-Seed to Seed

We engage from the point at which a founding team has a validated technical architecture and evidence of regulatory pathway viability.

Revenue

Pre-Revenue to Early Revenue

We accept revenue from zero to EUR 1M ARR at entry. In regulated markets, regulatory readiness often precedes revenue by design.

Team

2–4 Operator-Founders

Sector-specialist co-founders with direct experience inside the financial workflows they are automating or replacing.

Pitch to Estes Capital