STOCKHOLM, 8TH JULY, 2022 – After just a few months in the market, Gilion (formerly known as Ark Kapital) announces a €150M extension to its  loan pool available to European founders. Following the €165M seed round in March this year, Gilion can now provide a total of €300M to investment-worthy founders through non-dilutive loans of €1-10M. This marks an important step towards Gilion's mission of becoming the center of gravity for growth financing and intelligence, as this is only the beginning of the build up of their future capital pool for founders. 

The loan facility comes from a Swedish bank and makes ArK Kapital the holder of one of the biggest lending pools available to European tech founders. The reason that more money is being funneled into Gilion is because tech founders are in greater need than ever to access alternative funding and because Gilion’s product suite is unique in the space. 

Gilion stands apart from first-generation revenue-based financing (RBF) products, which are more similar to pay-day loans for businesses, due to tech companies typically needing to start repaying the loan instantly and repay the full amount in 6-12 month. In contrast, ArK’s financial product suite is crafted to give founders a lot more legroom, designed to fit the reality of many tech companies growth journeys. The ArK Growth Loan  lasts up to seven years, with repayments not starting for two-to-three years– letting founders build without having to start repaying with borrowed money. The second loan product in the portfolio allows founders to get instant access the money they’ve earned through various marketplaces, letting them reinvest into growth peaks.

Gilion is the only capital player that has the confidence to lend with the type of risk posed by the growth loan, which is attributed to an artificial intelligence (AI) maturity rarely found in the capital market. This early expertise is ushered in by co-founder and CPTO Henrik Landgren, Spotify's first VP of analytics and the creator of EQT’s Motherbrain. 

As Gilion’s AI-platform (AIM) grows in sophistication, and the capital pool keeps extending – Gilion will be able to provide an unprecedented level of financial craftsmanship directed towards the founder community.

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Henrik Landgren, CPTO and co-founder, comments:

“We find ourselves right in the eye of the current storm. We are honestly the only ones that offer a real option to equity funding, with big loans stretching over several years. That is why more money is being put into our pocket this early on, as the demand is so high. Getting funding from us should however not be seen as a rescue package, but a sign of strength. We take a DNA-test of companies' growth; if they get a loan, it means that they are showing the type of growth the whole capital market is scouting for.”

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Sixth-time-founder Oliver Hildebrandt, CEO and co-founder, adds:

"AIM, and our AI-driven, always-connected approach to underwriting seems to be exactly what the financial markets have been waiting, which makes it possible for us to onboard more and more financial partners to the AIM-platform, unlocking more growth-money for the European founder community."