10x Banking reaches profitability, closes £40m round with AshGrove

10x Banking has raised £40 million from AshGrove Capital, the company announced in August 2026, capping a period of sustained profitability and strong revenue growth.

The funding comes as the cloud-native core banking platform reached EBITDA-positive status for the first time in its ten-year history. Over the past year alone, 10x grew annual recurring revenue by more than 30%, expanded to 10 million live customer accounts across its client base, and signed more than 10 new financial institutions to its platform.

AshGrove Capital, which invests in fast-growing B2B software companies across Europe, comes on board as a fresh backer. The investment reflects confidence in 10x's position within a broader industry shift: banks worldwide are gradually replacing monolithic, legacy core systems with cloud-native platforms that can operate in real time and support rapid product launches.

10x's timing reflects this transition. Founded in 2016 by Antony Jenkins, the former chief executive of Barclays, the company built a fourth-generation core banking platform designed specifically for the demands of modern retail and institutional banking. Its technology handles more than 10,000 transactions per second at 99.99% availability, and counts among its clients major institutions including Westpac, Chase UK, Old Mutual and West Brom Building Society.

"Financial institutions have a clear ambition to innovate, but many remain constrained by infrastructure that was not built for real-time, digital banking," Jenkins said in the announcement. The company was created specifically to remove that constraint, he added, allowing banks to launch products faster and serve customers in real time.

A durable business model

What sets 10x's funding round apart is the path that led to it. The company achieved profitability while maintaining steep revenue growth, suggesting it built a durable business model rather than chasing high-burn-rate expansion. The £40 million investment is not the company's first external funding. It raised series rounds before this, but the new capital marks a shift toward aggressive international expansion.

Profitability with 30%+ revenue growth is uncommon among SaaS companies at scale, where the typical playbook involves heavy spending to capture market share. 10x's ability to do both signals not just customer demand but customer stickiness: its existing clients are deepening their engagement with the platform rather than seeking alternatives.

This matters for European investors and founders watching the core banking space. 10x's success demonstrates that infrastructure plays in fintech can generate sustainable returns without the venture-scale spending associated with consumer-focused fintechs. Jenkins spent years at Citigroup and Barclays before launching 10x, giving the company a founder with deep domain expertise in enterprise banking. That background allowed him to build something that resonates immediately with enterprise buyers.

Deploying capital for global expansion

The company plans to use the new capital to accelerate its sales organisation and go-to-market operations as it pursues international expansion. 10x already operates clients across Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Thailand. The investment will support the onboarding of additional institutions in these markets, though the company has not publicly committed to a specific pipeline.

The co-founder and managing partner of AshGrove Capital, Phil Fretwell, highlighted the rarity of what 10x has accomplished. Building a cloud-native platform at enterprise scale is exceptionally difficult. 10x has delivered working systems that run real customer accounts at real institutions, a track record that gives banks confidence to migrate rather than to pilot unknown alternatives. Fretwell sees powerful tailwinds for the business. Across the industry, established banks are actively modernising their infrastructure, moving away from monolithic systems toward architectures that can handle real-time operations and machine learning workloads. 10x is positioned to capture that demand.

The larger context here is that legacy core banking systems have become a source of competitive disadvantage for traditional financial institutions. They cannot process transactions in real time, support the continuous product iteration that digital-native competitors demand, or provide the flexible data architecture required for machine-learning models. For established banks, replacing these systems is existential, not optional.

10x has captured a significant piece of this opportunity. With 10 million live accounts already on its platform and a growing base of financial institutions, it has moved beyond proof-of-concept into the phase where it can command serious investment. AshGrove's backing signals that investor appetite for fintech infrastructure remains strong, particularly when a company can demonstrate profitable unit economics and sustained revenue growth despite recent consolidation in the broader fintech sector.