After raising €10.7 million last year, the Dutch-German fintech is now securing another €30 million. Founders Duco van Lanschot and David Schreiber say: “We weren’t actively looking for a new investment, but with this amount we can further develop Duna, which gives us tremendous peace of mind and flexibility.”
Duco van Lanschot and David Schreiber are doing very well. After their fintech Duna went live in May last year, the two founders immediately landed a seed round of €10.7 million.
Now another very substantial investment follows, amounting to no less than €30 million. This Series A round is led by CapitalG, the independent growth fund of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Existing investors Index Ventures, Puzzle Ventures and Frank Slootman are also participating again.
With this sizeable Series A — certainly by Dutch fintech standards — Duna aims to accelerate the development of a digital identity for businesses: a fundamental infrastructure designed to simplify onboarding, compliance and fraud prevention for banks and other financial institutions. According to the company, organizations using the platform can onboard business clients up to ten times faster, while still meeting increasingly strict regulations.
Digital business identity and compliance are indispensable in the age of AI
When we call former Quote columnist Van Lanschot, he is clearly enthusiastic. “This is really amazing — especially because we weren’t necessarily looking for funding. Through mutual contacts, CapitalG heard about us. And the very first contact, an email, was immediately very thoughtful. That instantly created trust.” And, honestly, although the money wasn’t strictly necessary, Van Lanschot is very happy with it. “With this amount, Duna’s long-term future is more than secured. We can now continue to invest aggressively in research and development.”
He continues: “In times like these, when AI is advancing rapidly, there are enormous opportunities for companies. But at the same time, it also increases the scale and complexity of fraud. That’s exactly why a secure, reusable business identity is more urgent than ever. With Duna, we automate these checks in a way that demonstrably complies with regulatory requirements, turning compliance from a bottleneck into a scalable part of growth. To achieve this, we invest heavily in research and development — and now we can keep doing that at full speed.”
According to Van Lanschot, it’s easy to explain why investors are lining up to put capital into Duna. “Identity is one of the biggest unsolved problems on the internet. Banks and other financial institutions spend as much as ten to twenty percent of their total costs on compliance and identity checks. These processes are often manual and fragmented, resulting in high costs, fraud and lost revenue. We’re building infrastructure that fundamentally changes that.”
Many major clients already, but still a wish list
It’s no surprise, then, that companies are eager to make this process more efficient. Within a year of going live, Duna has already attracted an impressive list of major clients, including Bol, Brand New Day, Plaid and Mews. And that customer base is set to grow further in the coming years. “Of course we have a list of new dream clients ready, but I’m not going to share that with Quote,” Van Lanschot laughs.
Van Lanschot also laughs when asked whether a bottle of champagne was opened after closing the investment. “Haha, no. Of course this is a fantastic step in the company’s development, but I’d rather celebrate the moment we bring in a new customer.” Duly noted.
