Revolut has taken another decisive step in its climb toward global financial heavyweight status. The London-based digital finance company announced on Monday that it has completed a major secondary share sale that pegs its valuation at $75 billion — a dramatic 66% rise from last year and one of the strongest signals yet that investors see the company as Europe’s most powerful fintech contender.

The sale attracted a dense cluster of blue-chip backers. Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer, and Fidelity led the process, while Andreessen Horowitz, Franklin Templeton, and Nvidia’s venture capital arm also joined in. The valuation comes from private markets rather than a public listing, but it still positions Revolut above several of Europe’s largest publicly traded banks, surpassing Barclays, Société Générale, and Deutsche Bank. For a 10-year-old startup, that gulf is striking.

Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut has grown far beyond the travel-focused app it started as. It now has more than 65 million customers worldwide and produced a pretax profit of £1.1 billion ($1.44 billion) last year, rising 149% as its global footprint widened. Its valuation arc has been steep: $33 billion in 2021, $45 billion last year, and now $75 billion — recording one of the most dramatic climbs of any European tech company.

In its statement, Revolut said this marks the fifth time employees have been given the opportunity to sell portions of their shares, an option that has already minted fortunes for many early hires. Storonsky praised staff for helping the company grow well beyond expectations.

“I’d like to thank our team for their determination and energy, and for believing that it is possible to build a global financial and technology leader from Europe,” he said.

Storonsky himself relocated from London to Dubai last year as Revolut expanded management operations and sought friendlier regulatory environments for some of its ambitions.

Even with its momentum, Revolut is still locked in a lengthy process with UK regulators. The company has been trying for years to secure a full banking license in Britain, something Storonsky says remains his top priority. The long delay has attracted industry attention since Revolut’s size, speed of growth, and international customer base would make it one of the most significant entrants into Britain’s retail banking ecosystem in decades.

Analysts see clear strengths of a widely recognized brand, advanced technology, global accessibility, and an ability to scale quickly. But they also note challenges. Revolut still earns a large share of its income from cryptocurrency trading and from revenue tied to high-interest-rate conditions. Average customer deposits remain far lower than those at traditional banks, and the company acknowledges that too few users treat it as their primary account, limiting Revolut’s capacity to compete directly with legacy lenders on core financial relationships.

But Revolut is attempting to change that. The company is pushing into credit products, planning to expand into consumer loans, mortgages, and later, business lending. It is also exploring the possibility of acquiring a U.S. bank as part of a deeper expansion into the American financial market — a move that would give it the regulatory footing needed to go head-to-head with established institutions.

For now, the new $75 billion valuation signals that investors believe Revolut is entering a new phase. It no longer resembles an upstart challenger trying to wrestle market share from incumbent banks; instead, it looks increasingly like a technology-driven financial institution preparing for a fight on equal footing.

With customers, revenue, and investor confidence still climbing, Revolut’s trajectory suggests that the company sees itself as a future global bank — one built from code rather than branches.

The slow-burn robotaxi race that started more than a decade ago has turned into a full-scale sprint, and on Friday, Waymo took another decisive step ahead of the pack.

The Alphabet-owned autonomous driving company announced that it is now “officially authorized to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State,” a regulatory win that deepens its lead in a U.S. field crowded with hype but short on real driverless deployment.

Waymo already runs commercial autonomous operations in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles, and it operates in several cities outside California, including Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix. But new maps published by the California Department of Motor Vehicles show that the company’s accessible testing and deployment territory has expanded dramatically in both Northern and Southern California.

In the Bay Area, Waymo’s newly approved zone now covers most of the East Bay and North Bay — including Napa and the wider Wine Country — and stretches all the way to Sacramento. In Southern California, the company’s territory now reaches from Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, down to San Diego, significantly enlarging the corridor where its autonomous vehicles can operate without a human driver behind the wheel.

The approval allows full driverless testing and deployment, though the San Francisco Chronicle notes that Waymo still needs additional state authorization before carrying paying passengers in some of these new areas.

Even so, Waymo is already looking ahead. The company said, “Next stop: welcoming riders in San Diego in mid-2026!” That marks an adjustment from its earlier plan to begin service in San Diego next year, part of a rollout list that also included Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

The announcement is just the latest in a flood of expansion news. Over the past two weeks, Waymo has revealed moves into Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Tampa; confirmed that it is removing safety drivers in preparation for a commercial launch in Miami; and said it will begin offering robotaxi rides that use freeways in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.

This pace is a direct result of a long U.S. robotaxi race that began in earnest in the early 2010s, when Google’s self-driving project — now Waymo — became the first major effort to pursue a fully autonomous, driverless ride-hailing future. Since then, competitors have entered the field, including Cruise, Zoox, Motional, and Tesla. But the companies have taken sharply different paths and achieved very different milestones.

Waymo has been the most consistent U.S. operator to secure permits for fully driverless commercial services, particularly in Arizona and California. It has deployed vehicles without human safety drivers in multiple cities and has carried paying passengers under approved programs. Cruise briefly reached similar milestones before a major safety incident in San Francisco triggered a suspension of its driverless permits in California and a significant pullback in operations.

Tesla, meanwhile, has pursued another model built around its advanced driver-assistance system, FSD, which still requires a human driver to remain attentive and ready to take control. Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service, and regulators have not approved its vehicles for unsupervised autonomous operation. The company has announced plans to introduce a dedicated robotaxi vehicle, but it has not launched driverless ride-hailing operations of its own.

Waymo’s growing map — now including wine valleys, commuter belts, dense urban corridors, and the long stretch toward the U.S.–Mexico border — reflects how far it has moved ahead in the operational race. Instead of relying on supervised autonomy or limited pilot zones, it has pursued broad state-approved territories where its vehicles can operate without a human in the driver’s seat.

Its expansion has become a recurring topic on the Equity podcast. On the latest episode, co-host Sean O’Kane pointed out that as Waymo gains more unfettered access across the Bay Area, riders may begin spending longer periods in the cars, leading to new and unpredictable behavior inside the vehicles — something the company will have to manage as it grows.

The new California approval for Waymo is believed to represent a shift from operating isolated pockets of robotaxi service to building a connected network of regions that could eventually function as a single driverless ecosystem. With its mid-2026 San Diego target now on the calendar, the company appears ready to test how large and complex a driverless service can become.