Grab Holdings, the Southeast Asian ride-hailing, delivery and payments group, signed definitive agreements on September 15, 2026 to acquire a controlling 60% stake in Atome Financial, the buy now, pay later and digital lending business of Singapore-based Advance Intelligence Group (AIGL). Grab will pay $1.49 billion in cash, of which $260 million is new growth capital going into Atome rather than to selling shareholders.
The first stage of the deal is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions. Grab said it will fund the purchase entirely from cash it already holds, that the deal will not affect its share buyback programme, and that it expects the acquisition to add to group adjusted EBITDA once completed.
After closing, Grab plans to consolidate Atome into its Financial Services segment. Atome's existing management team will continue to run the business, according to the joint announcement.
A two-step path to full ownership
Grab has also agreed with AIGL and the other sellers to buy the remaining 40% of Atome roughly two years after the first closing, again subject to regulatory approval. The price for that second stake is not fixed. It will be set by a formula based on Atome's results over the six months before the second closing: 13 times annualised adjusted EBITDA, weighted at 75%, and 2.5 times annualised revenue, weighted at 25%.
The resulting equity valuation for the whole company cannot fall below $2 billion or rise above $4.5 billion. At least half of the payment for the second stake will be made in cash. TechNode Global noted that the $4.5 billion figure is a ceiling under the formula, not a sum Grab has agreed to pay today.
“We founded Atome Financial eight years ago on a simple conviction: everyone deserves access to responsible credit and financial services, not just those with a conventional banking history.”
What Atome built
Atome Financial, whose legal entity is Neuroncredit Pte. Ltd., offers buy now, pay later loans, consumer cash loans, BNPL cards and other digital lending products. It operates in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, and in Thailand through a minority stake in a joint venture, according to TechNode Global.
The company reported 25 million cumulative transacting users, a network of more than 30,000 merchant brands and a gross loan portfolio of about $1 billion as of June 30, 2026, based on unaudited management accounts. DealStreetAsia reported that Atome posted revenue of $470 million in 2025, up about 80% from a year earlier, and that 2025 was its second consecutive year of pre-tax profit.
Jefferson Chen, chairman and CEO of AIGL and chief executive of Atome, said in the announcement that he founded Atome eight years ago. AIGL itself was founded in 2016. In October 2021 it raised more than $400 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus, with Northstar, Vision Plus Capital, Gaorong Capital and EDBI also investing, at a valuation of over $2 billion, Frontier Enterprise reported. Bloomberg reported a further $80 million raise in May 2023.
Why Grab is buying
Financial services is the only one of Grab's three main businesses that still loses money. DealStreetAsia reported that the unit had an adjusted EBITDA loss of $15 million in the second quarter of 2026, while mobility earned $191 million and deliveries $96 million. Grab already offers payments, digital banks, partner lending and insurance across a user base of nearly 54 million monthly transacting users.
Grab chief financial officer Peter Oey said Atome gives the company a proven consumer lending operator and an established merchant base, and allows Grab to grow the segment faster and more cheaply than building it in-house. President and chief operating officer Alex Hungate pointed to Atome's use of AI to underwrite loans as a way to scale lending while managing risk.
Alongside the deal, Grab said it expects its Financial Services segment, including Atome, to generate $500 million in adjusted EBITDA by 2028, with a combined gross loan portfolio of more than $6 billion. It also raised its group target for 2028 to $1.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA and more than 30% annual revenue growth from 2025.
Talks that began earlier in the year
DealStreetAsia first reported in June 2026 that Grab was in talks to invest in Atome, and Grab confirmed the discussions with the September announcement. In April, Hungate had said Grab was in the early stages of looking at financial services beyond its own platform, including buy now, pay later.
Because the first closing is not expected until the third quarter of 2027, and the purchase of the final 40% is due about two years after that, Grab would not own all of Atome until around 2029. Until then, the price of the last stake will depend on how much revenue and adjusted EBITDA Atome produces under Grab's control.
