Syed Imran Haider 
Jack Zhang, the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex revealed that the payment startup had reached an annual revenue run rate of about $500 million.
He further said that the Tencet-backed firm is gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) by 2026.
The Future
Last month, the Singapore-based firm managed to achieve an ARR milestone of $500 million. He said that $1 billion was the next big milestone they want to achieve.
He added that they hoped to achieve it in 2026 or 2027. The run rate measures the amount of revenue a company is like to generate in one year, which is based on its monthly performance.
According to Zhang, there has been significant growth in Airwallex’s business in the last year. This is because it expanded into developed markets, such as Europe, the United Kingdom and North America.
According to statistics, Airwallex saw a 300% increase in its year-over-year revenue in the Americas.
Zhang revealed that more than 35% of the total transaction volumes of Airwallex now come from North America, Europe and the UK.
As far as an IPO is concerned, the chief executive said that they plan on getting ready for it in the next two years.
He said that they would make preparations in 2025 and decide where to go with it in 2026.
The Performance
Zhang revealed that this year, Airwallex had seen its annual payment processing volumes cross the $100 billion mark. This marked an increase from last year of about 73%.
This came as the company saw its volumes rise across all its products, which include foreign exchange, payments, issuing and payouts.
The chief executive said that they had crossed the $100 billion mark in nine years. However, they hoped to reach $200 billion in less than a year.
Currently, Airwallex is making a loss. But, the company did achieve profitability in December 2023 on a monthly basis, along with January of 2024.
According to Zhang, making an annual net profit is not a priority of the company, considering its current pace of growth.
However, Airwallex has managed to find a way to keep its costs down.
AI
Zhang said that Airwallex was boosting the productivity of its employees, thanks to artificial intelligence. Ultimately, the company was able to accomplish more with less.
For instance, the CEO said that Airwallex is experimenting with a company named 11x, which provides access to digital ‘AI workers’ to businesses.
These are aimed at replacing the staff that usually focuses on managing sales leads i.e. sales development representatives (SDRs).
He revealed that they had gone live with the pilot recently, but Zhang is confident that the AI agents would be adopted.
In fact, he believes that they are likely to replace almost 70% of SDRs with AI. But, he stressed that while AI will replace some roles, the technology will enhance most of them.
In addition, it would help their sales team in increasing their productivity. Airwallex has a valuation of $5.6 billion and has been tipped as one of the major candidates for an IPO.
