Latest news with #NickHuber
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Fintech firm Salmon completes $88m fundraise
Philippines-based financial services firm Salmon Group has raised $88m to expand its business in the Asian country. The funding includes a $60m drawdown from a three-year Nordic bond framework agreement valued at $150m, alongside $28m in new equity sourced from US institutional investors and existing shareholders. The equity round was spearheaded by Spice Expeditions, a venture capital firm established by Nick Huber. Investors include the International Finance Corporation, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund ADQ/Lunate, Northstar, Back in Black Capital, and various Filipino stakeholders. Salmon co-founder Pavel Fedorov said: 'Salmon is on a mission to revolutionise banking in Southeast Asia. For too long the legacy banks in the region provided sub-standard product, service and customer experience, and the Philippines is the case in point of this. 'At Salmon, we believe in the quality of our technology and proprietary AI solutions to bring customers better products, of which the most empowering is access to credit. In 2024, Salmon obtained regulatory approval from the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to acquire a controlling interest in the Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa (Laguna). Founded in July 2022 by industry professionals Fedorov, George Chesakov, and Raffy Montemayor, Salmon Group holds SEC licences for its lending companies in the Philippines. The firm aims to establish a technology-driven, credit-focused banking model in Southeast Asia, with the Philippines as its initial market. Founded in July 2022, Salmon leverages AI technology and a proprietary credit engine to provide various consumer credit products, including Salmon Credit, Salmon Installment, and Salmon Cash Loans. Last year, Salmon's BSP-regulated bank on the back of the strength of its consumer loan portfolio introduced a Salmon time savings deposit, offering 8.88% deposit rate in the Philippines. "Fintech firm Salmon completes $88m fundraise" was originally created and published by Retail Banker International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Sun
4 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Salmon Raises $88 Million To Grow Its Business In The Philippines, Sets Up A $150 Million Nordic Bond Framework Agreement For Scaling Up
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Media OutReach Newswire - 17 June 2025 - Salmon Group Ltd ('Salmon'), a leading emerging markets financial services firm, operating a financing company and BSP-regulated bank in the Philippines, announces the completion of a $88MM fundraise to double down on its commitment to bring cutting-edge financial services and simplify access to credit across Southeast Asia. The funding transaction consists of the $60MM drawdown under a 3-year $150MM Nordic bond framework agreement and $28MM of new equity raised from blue-chip US institutional investors, Antler Elevate as well as existing shareholders of Salmon. The list of existing investors of Salmon includes International Finance Corporation, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi ADQ/Lunate, Northstar, Back in Black Capital and prominent Filipino investors. The equity round was led by Spice Expeditions, LP ('Spice'), a venture capital firm focused on global financial services. Spice was founded by Nick Huber, who was a partner at Ribbit Capital prior to launching the firm in 2024. The bond transaction marks the first-ever Nordic bond issuance by a technology firm out of Southeast Asia. At $88MM of combined funding the transaction is one of the largest recent investments in the Philippines financial technology industry, propelling Salmon to the top ranks of challenger banks in the Philippines. Commenting on the transaction, Pavel Fedorov, Co-founder of Salmon, noted that 'Salmon is on a mission to revolutionise banking in Southeast Asia. For too long the legacy banks in the region provided sub-standard product, service and customer experience, and the Philippines is the case in point of this. At Salmon, we believe in the quality of our technology and proprietary AI solutions to bring customers better products, of which the most empowering is access to credit. Even though Salmon is only two and a half years old, today we have one of the highest-rated financial service applications in the Philippines (rated 4.8/4.7 in App Store/Google Play), are present both online and at 3,000+ locations across the country and offer four consumer credit products that unlock access to better lives for millions. The 8.88% deposit rate offered by our BSP-regulated bank is the highest in the Philippines as we pass cost efficiencies of our tech-centric model and limited branch infrastructure directly to bank depositors. With successful closing of this transaction and with the strength of Salmon's one-of-a-kind team, we will be taking Salmon to leadership positions in the financial services industry across Southeast Asia. We are grateful to new and existing investors for their trust and support of our vision.'
Finextra
4 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
Salmon raises $88 million to grow business in the Philippines
Salmon Group Ltd ('Salmon'), a leading emerging markets financial technology firm operating a financing company and BSP-regulated bank in the Philippines, announces the completion of an $88MM fundraise to double down on its commitment to bring cutting-edge fintech and simplify access to credit across Southeast Asia. 0 The funding transaction consists of a $60MM drawdown under a 3-year $150MM Nordic bond framework agreement and $28MM of new equity raised from blue-chip U.S. institutional investors, Antler Elevate, as well as existing shareholders of Salmon. The list of existing investors includes the International Finance Corporation, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi ADQ/Lunate, Northstar, Back in Black Capital, and prominent Filipino investors. The equity round was led by Spice Expeditions, LP ('Spice'), a venture capital firm focused on global fintech. Spice was founded by Nick Huber, who was a partner at Ribbit Capital prior to launching the firm in 2024. The bond transaction marks the first-ever Nordic bond issuance by a technology firm out of Southeast Asia. At $88MM of combined funding, the transaction is one of the largest recent investments in the Philippine financial technology industry, propelling Salmon to the top ranks of challenger fintech players in the country. Commenting on the transaction, Pavel Fedorov, Co-founder of Salmon, noted: 'Salmon is on a mission to revolutionise banking in Southeast Asia. For too long, the legacy banks in the region have provided sub-standard products, service, and customer experience, and the Philippines is a case in point. At Salmon, we believe in the quality of our technology and proprietary AI solutions to bring customers better products — the most empowering of which is access to credit. Even though Salmon is only two and a half years old, today we have one of the highest-rated financial service mobile apps in the Philippines (rated 4.8/4.7 in App Store/Google Play), are present both online and at 3,000+ locations across the country, and offer four consumer credit products that unlock access to better lives for millions. The 8.88% deposit rate offered by our BSP-regulated bank is the highest in the Philippines, as we pass cost efficiencies of our tech-centric model and limited branch infrastructure directly to bank depositors. With the successful closing of this transaction, and with the strength of Salmon's one-of-a-kind team, we will be taking Salmon to leadership positions in the financial services industry across Southeast Asia. We are grateful to new and existing investors for their trust and support of our vision.'
Business Wire
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Salmon Raises $88 Million to Grow Its Business in the Philippines, Sets up a $150 Million Nordic Bond Framework Agreement for Scaling up
MANILA, Philippines--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Salmon Group Ltd ('Salmon'), a leading emerging markets financial services firm, operating a financing company and BSP-regulated bank in the Philippines, announces the completion of a $88MM fundraise to double down on its commitment to bring cutting-edge financial services and simplify access to credit across Southeast Asia. The funding transaction consists of the $60MM drawdown under a 3-year $150MM Nordic bond framework agreement and $28MM of new equity raised from blue-chip US institutional investors, Antler Elevate as well as existing shareholders of Salmon. The list of existing investors of Salmon includes International Finance Corporation, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi ADQ/Lunate, Northstar, Back in Black Capital and prominent Filipino investors. The equity round was led by Spice Expeditions, LP ('Spice'), a venture capital firm focused on global financial services. Spice was founded by Nick Huber, who was a partner at Ribbit Capital prior to launching the firm in 2024. The bond transaction marks the first-ever Nordic bond issuance by a technology firm out of Southeast Asia. At $88MM of combined funding the transaction is one of the largest recent investments in the Philippines financial technology industry, propelling Salmon to the top ranks of challenger banks in the Philippines. Commenting on the transaction, Pavel Fedorov, Co-founder of Salmon, noted that 'Salmon is on a mission to revolutionise banking in Southeast Asia. For too long the legacy banks in the region provided sub-standard product, service and customer experience, and the Philippines is the case in point of this. At Salmon, we believe in the quality of our technology and proprietary AI solutions to bring customers better products, of which the most empowering is access to credit. Even though Salmon is only two and a half years old, today we have one of the highest-rated financial service applications in the Philippines (rated 4.8/4.7 in App Store/Google Play), are present both online and at 3,000+ locations across the country and offer four consumer credit products that unlock access to better lives for millions. The 8.88% deposit rate offered by our BSP-regulated bank is the highest in the Philippines as we pass cost efficiencies of our tech-centric model and limited branch infrastructure directly to bank depositors. With successful closing of this transaction and with the strength of Salmon's one-of-a-kind team, we will be taking Salmon to leadership positions in the financial services industry across Southeast Asia. We are grateful to new and existing investors for their trust and support of our vision.' About Salmon Salmon Group Ltd. operates a BSP-regulated bank (the Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa Laguna), and SEC-licensed lending companies in the Philippines. The company is on a mission to build the best credit-led technology-centric bank in Southeast Asia with the Philippines representing its first market of operation. Founded in July 2022 by banking and technology veterans Pavel Fedorov, George Chesakov and Raffy Montemayor, Salmon uses AI-enabled technology and a proprietary credit engine to offer consumer credit (Salmon Credit, Salmon Installment, and Salmon Cash Loans), providing differentiated simplicity, quality of service and convenience to its customers. Salmon's mobile application is rated 4.8/4.7 in App Store/Google Play – one of the highest ratings for a financial services app in the Philippines; 92% of Salmon customers recommend its services to their friends and family. In 2024, Salmon's BSP-regulated bank on the back of the strength of its consumer loan portfolio launched a Salmon time savings deposit, which at 8.88% offers one of the most appealing deposit rates across the Philippines.
Business Mayor
13-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
AI power rankings upended: OpenAI, Google rise as Anthropic falls, Poe report finds
Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Poe's latest usage report shows OpenAI and Google strengthening their positions in key AI categories while Anthropic loses ground and specialized reasoning capabilities emerge as a crucial competitive battleground. According to data released today by Poe, a platform offering access to more than 100 AI models, significant market share shifts occurred across all major AI categories between January and May 2025. The data, drawn from Poe subscribers, provides rare visibility into actual user preferences beyond industry benchmarks. 'As a universal gateway to 100+ AI models, Poe has a unique view of usage trends across the ecosystem,' said Nick Huber, Poe's AI Ecosystem Lead, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. 'The most surprising things happening right now are rapid innovation (3x the number of releases Jan-May 2025 vs. the same period in 2024), an increasingly diverse competitive landscape, and reasoning models are the clear success story of early 2025.' A chart from Poe showing AI model rankings across different categories as of May 2025. OpenAI's GPT-4o dominates in text generation with 35.8% usage share, while Google's Gemini-2.5-Pro leads in reasoning capabilities and Imagen3 in image generation. (Credit: Poe) In core text generation, OpenAI's GPT-4o maintained its commanding position with 35.8% of message share, while the company's newer GPT-4.1 family quickly captured 9.4% of usage within weeks of launch. Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro similarly achieved approximately 5% message share shortly after its introduction. These gains came largely at the expense of Anthropic's Claude models, which saw a 10% absolute decline in share during the reporting period. The report notes that Claude 3.7 Sonnet has now substantially replaced the earlier Claude 3.5 Sonnet in user preference, though the latter still maintains a notable 12% usage share. DeepSeek, which experienced viral growth earlier this year, has seen its momentum slow as competitors have released their own affordable, verbose reasoning models. DeepSeek R1's message share declined from a peak of 7% in mid-February to 3% by the end of April. Perhaps the most significant trend identified in the report is the dramatic growth in specialized reasoning models, which have expanded from approximately 2% to 10% of all text messages sent on Poe since the beginning of 2025. 'Reasoning models, even in the early days, have demonstrated a remarkable ability to handle complex tasks with increased precision,' Huber told VentureBeat. 'Early adopters are clearly finding value in this and are willing to take on the tradeoffs in cost and processing time for better outcomes.' In this high-growth segment, Gemini 2.5 Pro has quickly established itself as a leader, capturing approximately 31% of reasoning model usage within just six weeks of launch. It now leads the category, ahead of Claude's reasoning-specialized models. OpenAI continues to innovate rapidly in this space, releasing multiple reasoning models (o1-pro, o3-mini, o3-mini-high, o3, and o4-mini) in the first four months of 2025 alone. The report indicates that Poe users quickly adopt OpenAI's newest offerings, transitioning from older models like o1 to newer alternatives like o3. The report also noted the emergence of hybrid reasoning models, such as Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview and Qwen 3, which can dynamically adjust their reasoning level within conversations. However, these models currently represent only about 1% of reasoning model usage. Industry analysts suggest this shift toward specialized reasoning capabilities signals a maturing AI market where raw text generation is becoming commoditized, forcing providers to differentiate through higher-value capabilities that can command premium pricing. The image generation market appears increasingly competitive, with Google's Imagen 3 family steadily growing from approximately 10% to 30% share during 2025, now rivaling category leader Black Forest Labs' FLUX family of models, which collectively held about 35% share as of late April. OpenAI's GPT-Image-1, introduced to the API in late April, rapidly achieved 17% of image generation usage in just two weeks, mirroring its viral adoption in the ChatGPT app throughout March and early April. The report indicates that FLUX models maintained their overall plurality share in image generation on Poe, but experienced a moderate decline from approximately 45% to 35% during the reporting period. This three-way competition between Google, OpenAI, and Black Forest Labs marks a significant shift from early 2024, when Midjourney and Stable Diffusion variants dominated the space. The rapid improvement in image quality, adherence to prompts, and rendering speed has transformed this category into one of the most fiercely contested AI battlegrounds. Enterprise adoption of image generation has accelerated substantially in the past six months, according to supplementary industry data, with marketing departments and creative agencies increasingly integrating these tools into their production workflows. In video generation, Chinese lab Kuaishou's newly released Kling family of models has quickly disrupted the market, collectively capturing about 30% usage share. Most notably, Kling-2.0-Master attained 21% of all video generation on Poe by the end of April, just three weeks after its release. Google's Veo 2 maintained a strong position with approximately 20% share following its February launch, while category pioneer Runway saw its usage share decline substantially from about 60% to 20% throughout the reporting period. The speed of Kling's market penetration highlights how quickly the competitive landscape can shift in emerging AI categories, where established players may not maintain their early advantages as newcomers rapidly iterate and improve. Video generation remains the most computationally intensive consumer-facing AI application, with models requiring significant processing power to create even short clips. This has kept usage more limited than text or image generation, but rapidly falling costs and improving quality are expected to drive broader adoption through 2025. Early enterprise adopters include advertising agencies, social media content creators, and educational platforms that have begun integrating AI-generated video into their content strategies despite the technology's current limitations. ElevenLabs continues to lead the audio generation category, fulfilling approximately 80% of all subscribers' text-to-speech requests during the reporting period. However, the report highlights emerging competition from newcomers Cartesia, Unreal Speech, PlayAI, and Orpheus, which offer differentiated voice options, effects, and pricing models. This market dominance by a single player stands in stark contrast to the more fragmented competition in other AI categories. Industry experts attribute ElevenLabs' continued leadership to its early market entry, extensive voice library, and consistent quality improvements that have maintained a technical edge over competitors. Newer entrants are finding success by targeting specific market niches. Unreal Speech has gained traction with podcast producers and audiobook publishers by offering specialized voice actors and emotional range capabilities. Meanwhile, Cartesia has focused on multilingual voices with authentic accents, capturing interest from global enterprises and educational platforms. The audio AI market is projected to grow substantially through 2025 as text-to-speech capabilities approach human-like quality and find applications in customer service, accessibility solutions, and content creation. The relatively low computational requirements compared to video generation allow for wider deployment and experimentation. The dynamic nature of the AI model landscape presents both opportunities and challenges for businesses integrating these technologies. 'It can be challenging to keep up with the latest in AI and the pace is only gaining speed,' Huber told VentureBeat. 'If you're a business already running AI at scale, investing in robust, provider-agnostic evaluation pipelines is critical because the model that's best this month may be second-best next month.' Read More S25 Musical Theater Jazz (MS/HS) - Elizabethtown News Enterprise This volatility in model preferences underscores the value of platforms like Poe that offer access to multiple models through a single interface, allowing users to compare outputs and adapt to the changing AI ecosystem. Industry analysts suggest that the growing importance of reasoning capabilities may signal a shift in how businesses evaluate and deploy AI models, with an increasing focus on precision and reliability for complex tasks rather than just speed or cost efficiency. As frontier labs continue to release more capable models at an accelerating pace, businesses face difficult decisions about when to standardize on specific platforms versus maintaining flexibility. Many enterprise AI leaders are adopting a portfolio approach, using different models for different tasks while maintaining the ability to switch providers as capabilities evolve. 'This is going to be an important space to watch, especially among frontier providers as it represents the best of what AI can currently accomplish,' Huber noted regarding reasoning models. The report indicates that multimedia capabilities are also becoming increasingly competitive, suggesting that text generation, long the primary focus of AI development, may be giving way to a more balanced ecosystem where image, video, and audio generation play equally important roles. Businesses that successfully navigate this complex landscape will likely be those that maintain evaluation frameworks focused on specific use cases rather than chasing the latest model releases, while simultaneously building technical infrastructure that allows for rapid adoption when meaningful improvements emerge. As AI models continue their game of musical chairs atop the rankings, one thing becomes clear: in today's market, the crown rarely stays on the same head for long — and companies betting their future on yesterday's AI champion may find themselves aligned with tomorrow's also-ran.
