Primer's $100M Series C targets US expansion for AI-driven checkout

Primer is bringing its payments infrastructure pitch to the United States with a fresh $100M Series C. The London-based startup, founded in 2020 by Gabriel Le Roux and Paul Anthony, has raised the round led by Sofina, with participation from Peak XV Partners and existing investors including Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest. The new funding brings Primer's total raised to approximately $170M.

Primer provides a unified infrastructure layer for payments and finance teams. Merchants use its platform to orchestrate processors, fraud tools, and payout rails through a single integration, giving them complete transaction context for automated decision-making and AI-driven optimization. Founded by former PayPal and Braintree executives, the company's core pitch is that unifying fragmented payment stacks enables AI-driven payment intelligence.

The company plans to use the capital to scale its sales, engineering, and customer success teams in the United States, a market it expects to represent over a third of its business by 2028. That makes US expansion the clearest priority for the round, and it signals where Primer sees its next wave of growth.

Primer's model sits at the intersection of payments infrastructure and AI, and the company's existing backers include Accel, Balderton, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest. With Sofina stepping in as lead investor, Primer now has additional firepower to push its unified payments layer deeper into the American market.