Moove, the Lagos-founded mobility fintech that finances ride-hail and delivery drivers, has raised $250 million at a $2.1 billion valuation to accelerate its push into autonomous vehicle (AV) infrastructure, according to Business News Nigeria. The round pushes Moove firmly past unicorn territory and marks one of the largest single equity raises by an Africa-founded startup in recent memory.
Founded in 2020 by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, Moove built its early model around revenue-based vehicle financing — embedding itself as a fleet supplier to Uber across Africa, the Middle East, and India. The $2.1 billion valuation represents a significant step up from its prior rounds, which had valued the company at $750 million as recently as 2022 when it raised a $105 million Series A extension.
The fresh capital is earmarked for Moove's AV business, a strategic pivot that positions the company as infrastructure for the next generation of autonomous ride-hail fleets rather than simply a financier for human drivers. The company has already signalled partnerships with AV operators, using its existing logistics and fleet-management backbone to onboard self-driving vehicles at scale — a model that, if it works, could make Moove the preferred balance-sheet partner for AV companies entering markets where traditional auto finance is thin.
The timing is deliberate. Global AV players are actively hunting emerging-market entry points where regulatory environments are less restrictive and labour arbitrage arguments for autonomy are less pronounced — meaning the business case hinges almost entirely on infrastructure availability. Moove is positioning itself as that infrastructure layer.
Separately, pan-African crypto exchange Yellow Card raised $40 million to expand its stablecoin platform across the continent, according to Africa Business Communities. Yellow Card, which operates in more than 20 African countries and allows users to buy, sell, and transfer stablecoins in local currencies, is using the raise to deepen liquidity, extend its merchant payments rails, and push into new corridors.
The stablecoin angle is increasingly central to Africa's cross-border payments story. Dollar-pegged stablecoins like USDT and USDC have become de facto forex instruments for African traders and freelancers who need to hold value outside depreciating local currencies. Yellow Card's infrastructure — which connects local bank accounts and mobile money wallets to stablecoin rails — sits at exactly that junction. The $40 million raise gives the company room to compete with Bitget, Binance, and newer entrants that are also racing to own the stablecoin-to-fiat corridor in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.
Taken together, the two deals underscore two distinct but complementary maturation curves in African tech funding. Moove's raise — large, late-stage, thesis-driven — reflects investor appetite for African-founded companies that have outgrown their home continent and are competing globally on a specific infrastructure bet. Yellow Card's round, more modest in absolute size but strategically dense, reflects the continued conviction that Africa's fragmented currency landscape makes it the world's most natural stablecoin market.
Why it matters: For investors and operators, Moove at $2.1 billion and Yellow Card's $40 million stablecoin bet both signal that the most durable African tech businesses are now being funded not on regional promise alone, but on globally relevant infrastructure plays — whether that means AV fleet financing or dollar-denominated payment rails for 1.4 billion people navigating currency volatility.