- Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures has led a $30 million funding round for the Berlin-based Coya.
- The German startup is hoping to build a digital insurance platform pitched at millennials.
- The funding is aimed at helping the startup get licensed, and Coya hopes to launch its product later this summer.
LONDON — Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures has led a $30 million funding round into the German insurance-technology startup Coya.
It's Valar's second investment in the company. Valar, Thiel's early-stage venture-capital company, took part in a $10 million funding round for Coya last August. e.ventures, La Famiglia, and Yabeo also took part in the latest round.
Coya, founded in 2016, is planning to build a digital insurance product pitched at millennials, and the latest cash injection is aimed at supporting the cost of getting regulated by BaFin, Germany's finance regulator. It hopes to launch later this summer.
"The funding provides the fuel to develop digitally focused insurance solutions that are fairer, faster, and future ready," Coya's founders said in a joint statement.
Thiel, who is best known for cofounding PayPal and being an early investor in Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), has been an active investor in European financial technology, or fintech, over recent years.
The billionaire was an early investor in the UK money-transfer business TransferWise and the UK insurance-technology startup Brolly, as well as backing the German fintech startups N26 and Deposit Solutions.
"We see huge potential in Coya," James Fitzgerald, a partner at Valar Ventures, said in a statement. "Building an insurance company for the current century requires the right balance of insurance and technology expertise, something that others — both incumbents and many insuretech startups — have not been able to achieve.
"Coya's determination to build a fully licensed and integrated insurance offering from the ground up, rather than rely on third parties, sets them apart in the space."
Coya was founded by two veterans of the hot German lending startup Kreditech alongside Dr. Peter Hagen, the former CEO of Vienna Insurance Group. It has 55 employees in Berlin.