Revolut’s $115 Billion Secondary Sale Mints Europe’s First Centicorn

EBM NEWSDESK ANALYSIS-By Anthony Gill 

Europe’s most valuable private technology company just got more valuable — and it is still not going public.

Revolut is seeking a secondary share sale that would value the London-based digital bank at $115 billion fully diluted, according to reporting from Bloomberg citing people with knowledge of the matter. If completed, the transaction would make Revolut Europe’s first centicorn — a private company valued above $100 billion — and mark a 53% step-up from the $75 billion valuation it secured in November 2025. At least $750 million in shares are expected to change hands, with investor demand potentially supporting up to $2 billion in total transactions. A formal process could begin this month. Revolut says it has no intention of going public before 2028.

The Numbers Behind the Milestone

The valuation being sought is not speculative. Revolut generated $6 billion in revenue in 2025 and $2.3 billion in profit — figures that place it firmly in the category of a mature global financial institution rather than a growth-stage startup. Its customer base has surpassed 65 million users, expanding at a rate that legacy European banks have not been able to match and, in most cases, have not seriously attempted to compete with.

The deal structure is a secondary transaction — existing shareholders, primarily early investors and employees, sell a portion of their holdings to incoming capital rather than the company raising fresh primary funds. Glade Brook Capital is expected to lead the transaction, joining existing backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, SoftBank and TCV. Revolut Chairman Martin Gilbert has already been meeting potential investors, with some of those conversations reportedly taking place at the Monaco Grand Prix — a detail that captures something of Revolut’s trajectory from scrappy London fintech to global capital markets fixture.

CEO and co-founder Nik Storonsky stands to benefit most directly. Internal company documents cited by Bloomberg suggest his equity stake — boosted by additional share awards triggered at the $115 billion threshold — could exceed $36 billion in value, placing him among the wealthiest technology founders in Europe.

Why Secondary Rather Than IPO

Revolut’s decision to remain private while pursuing annual secondary sales mirrors the approach adopted by Stripe, which spent several years conducting similar transactions before finally moving toward public markets. The logic is straightforward: secondary sales offer price discovery and employee liquidity without the disclosure requirements, quarterly earnings pressure and short-term shareholder scrutiny that accompany a public listing.

The company has been explicit about its timeline. Storonsky has indicated Revolut does not expect to go public before 2028. The FT has reported that the step-ups in valuation achieved through successive secondary rounds — from $45 billion to $75 billion to a target of $115 billion — are designed to build toward an IPO valuation in the range of $150 billion to $200 billion. On that trajectory, the current transaction is less a destination than a waypoint.

What has changed materially since the November round is the regulatory picture. Revolut received its full UK banking licence on 11 March 2026, ending years of a regulatory process that had become an embarrassment for both the company and the Financial Conduct Authority. The licence matters commercially — it allows Revolut to take deposits and issue credit in the UK under the full protection of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, unlocking a customer base that had remained cautious about holding material funds with an unlicensed institution. Revolut has also filed for a US national bank charter, a move that would give it direct access to the American consumer banking market without relying on its current partnership with Lead Bank.

What the Centicorn Label Actually Means

Europe has never produced a private technology company valued above $100 billion. That the first one is a fintech rather than a software or AI company says something significant about where European venture capital has concentrated its most durable bets — and something equally significant about the persistent gap between European and American public markets. Revolut’s closest US comparisons — Stripe and Chime — have each navigated the same secondary-sale-to-IPO path, though neither has yet completed the public listing that would test their private valuations against real market pricing.

The $115 billion figure sits in an uncomfortable zone for benchmarking. It is roughly equivalent to the market capitalisation of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank combined. It exceeds the valuations of NatWest and Standard Chartered. That a ten-year-old digital bank with no branches and a workforce a fraction the size of its legacy competitors commands that kind of premium from sophisticated private capital is either a compelling indictment of traditional banking’s failure to innovate — or a sign that private market valuations have become structurally detached from the metrics public investors will eventually apply.

The Verdict

Revolut is a genuinely exceptional business. Its revenue growth, profit margin and customer acquisition trajectory are difficult to argue with. The UK banking licence resolves the most serious regulatory question mark hanging over the company’s credibility, and the US charter application signals ambition that goes well beyond consolidating European market share.

The $115 billion valuation will face its real test not in this secondary round — where sophisticated investors with long time horizons and specific allocation mandates set the price — but when Revolut finally prices an IPO and submits its financials to the discipline of public market scrutiny. That moment is still two years away at minimum. Between now and then, the secondary market will continue to do what it has done since 2023: set the price that Revolut’s bankers want the public markets to eventually accept.

Europe has its first centicorn. What it does not yet have is confirmation that the number is real.

“Revolut generated $6 billion in revenue and $2.3 billion in profit in 2025. Its valuation now exceeds Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank combined. And it has no intention of going public before 2028.”

RELATED READS:

• The $1 Trillion Question: OpenAI Files for the Most Anticipated IPO in History — OpenAI heads to Wall Street losing $1.22 for every dollar it earns. Revolut’s secondary strategy looks conservative by comparison.
• Wall Street’s Index Plumbing Bends to the Trillion-Dollar IPO — The infrastructure of public markets is being stress-tested by a wave of mega-listings. Revolut is watching from the sidelines until 2028.
• Why Stablecoins Solve Cross-Border Payments — and What Comes Next — Revolut’s expansion into crypto and payments sits at the centre of the structural shift this piece examines.

.