Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 6, #340

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Here are some hints — and the answers — for the Feb. 6 Strands puzzle, No. 340.

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IPO hopeful Brex scored major win to sell in the EU, plans UK expansion

Financial services provider Brex on Thursday announced that it achieved a major milestone: It is now licensed in the European Union. That means it can now directly issue credit and debit cards and offer its spend management products to any business in all 30 EU countries with “no workarounds required,” as co-founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi wrote in a blog post.

While the corporate spend management startup previously supported 60 currencies in 200 countries, it could only sell its products to companies with a U.S. presence.

With the expansion, Brex is now authorized to sell spend management (complete with issuing cards) and other tools like embedded payments to EU companies and startups, a spokesperson tells TechCrunch. However, there’s a caveat: Banking and bill pay will not be initially available. The company hopes to roll those services out in the future.

While this is good news for Brex, it may also be good news for European startups. Brex’s claim to fame is offering startups expense management cards for their employees even if they wouldn’t yet qualify from traditional banks. Without a bank account offering, the youngest EU startups will still have to weigh their options.

Next up, Franceschi says he wants to expand Brex in the U.K., though he offered no specifics on those plans.

Franceschi said in December that Brex is on track to stop burning cash in 2025, “an important milestone to our future IPO.”

In February, sources told various news outlets that Brex was on track for $500 million in revenue this year as well. That’s quite the turnaround from a shaky moment in 2023 when Brex conducted layoffs and reportedly told employees that its cash burn was too high. There has been no hint yet as to when that IPO may take place, though.

Brex’s competitive win in the international market comes as its U.S. fintech competitors are having an overall moment. Ramp has been raising money from VCs like mad, hitting a $22.5 billion valuation just 45 days after a round with a $16 billion valuation. In March, Mercury raised a fresh $300 million and doubled its valuation to $3.5 billion.

Brex has not publicly announced new equity VC funding since 2022, when it raised $300 million in a Series D-2 round at a $12.3 billion valuation. It did, however, secure a fresh $260 million worth of debt in March 2024, backed by its spend management products, to help it pay for its cash-intensive business.