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TechCrunch’s September 2024 compilation lists eight major reported African startup acquisitions, from Fundamo’s reported $110 million sale to InstaDeep’s €500 million ($550 million) cash-and-stock deal. The companies’ reported pre-exit funding ranges from $5 million to more than $200 million, but those totals are not directly comparable: some include debt, some are estimates, and PaySpace’s funding amount is undisclosed. This is a dated selection, not a definitive or current ranking.
Eight major reported African startup exits
The values below are the figures reported in TechCrunch’s September 1, 2024 compilation. They are not all confirmed purchase prices: disclosure varies, and some values are estimates or attributed to sources. Cash-and-stock consideration should not be read as the amount any particular employee or investor received.
| Company | Business and base described | Acquirer and year | Reported exit value and terms | Reported funds raised before exit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| InstaDeep | Enterprise AI startup founded in 2014; based in Tunis and Paris | BioNTech, 2023 | €500 million ($550 million), cash and stock | Over $108 million |
| Sendwave | Money transfer service founded in 2014 | Zepz, 2020 | $500 million, cash and stock | Over $15 million |
| MainOne | West African data center and connectivity provider founded in 2010 | Equinix, 2021 | $320 million, all cash | Over $200 million in equity and debt |
| DPO Group | Payment gateway founded in 2006 | Network International, 2020 | $291 million in cash and stock, including $228.6 million cash | Over $15 million |
| Paystack | Lagos-founded payment processing platform launched in 2015 | Stripe, 2020 | More than $200 million, cash and stock | Over $12 million |
| Expensya | Tunis-based expense management and smart payment card software company | Medius, 2023 | About $120 million or more, cash and stock, according to sources | $25 million |
| Fundamo | Cape Town mobile financial services platform | Visa, 2011 | $110 million cash deal | $5 million |
| PaySpace | Mauritius-based cloud payroll and HR platform | Deel, 2024 | About $100 million or more, cash and stock | Undisclosed; described as bootstrapped before its first disclosed venture money from Netcash |
How to read the funding figures
The “funds raised” column reflects the compilation’s reported totals, not a standardized accounting measure. MainOne’s figure expressly combines equity and debt; PaySpace’s total is not disclosed. Other entries are reported as rounded or threshold amounts, so the figures do not establish that each company raised the same kinds of capital or that every dollar was equity financing.
Paystack illustrates why it helps to distinguish a particular financing round from a reported lifetime total. Its official company history confirms Stripe’s acquisition in October 2020 and records an $8 million Series A in August 2018 led by Stripe, with Visa and follow-on investment from Tencent and Y Combinator. That $8 million is the stated Series A amount; it is not the compilation’s reported lifetime total of over $12 million.
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Deal value does not mean the same thing in every transaction
InstaDeep and Sendwave lead this compilation by headline value, but both figures describe cash-and-stock deals. MainOne is reported as an all-cash $320 million transaction. DPO’s $291 million figure includes $228.6 million in cash, with the rest in stock. Those distinctions matter: a headline transaction value is not necessarily all cash, and it does not reveal how proceeds were divided among shareholders, employees, or other parties.
The values are best treated as reported acquisition figures, not a clean apples-to-apples measure of what each company was worth. Terms were not disclosed uniformly, and the compilation identifies some amounts as approximate or sourced estimates.
Rank #2
What the list says about the African startup landscape
The list spans sectors including enterprise AI, money transfers, data infrastructure, payments, expense management, mobile financial services, and payroll software. Its eight transactions also span 2011 to 2024, so it brings together deals made under different market conditions rather than measuring activity in a single year.
In separate ecosystem figures, TechCrunch reported 44 M&A exits and nearly $6 billion in venture capital for 2021, then 29 M&A exits and over $3 billion in venture capital for 2022. These are year-specific figures from its comparison; they do not, on their own, show that changes in exit volume caused changes in venture funding.
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Funding announcements from Flutterwave offer additional context on the scale of financing available to some African fintech companies, though Flutterwave is not one of the exits in this list. The company reported a $170 million Series C and $225 million in total investment at that point in 2021, followed by a $250 million Series D and a valuation above $3 billion in 2022. These are company-announced financing and valuation figures, not acquisition values.
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