Grab to Buy Majority Stake in SoftBank-Backed Atome for About $1.5 Billion

By Kimberley Kao

Grab has agreed to buy a 60% stake in Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash.

The transaction is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, Grab said Tuesday.

Atome is a digital-finance platform that operates in Southeast Asia offering buy-now-pay-later, insurance and other services. It is part of Singapore-based Advance Intelligence Group, whose investors include SoftBank and Warburg Pincus.

Atome's use of artificial intelligence to assess borrowers and manage risk will "help to scale and strengthen Grab's whole ecosystem," Grab President and Chief Operating Officer Alex Hungate said.

Grab also agreed to buy the remaining 40% from Advance Intelligence Group and other shareholders about two years after the initial transaction closes.

Grab expects its financial-services segment to generate $500 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by 2028, with a combined loan portfolio of more than $6 billion.

It also raised its overall adjusted Ebitda target for 2028 to $1.7 billion from $1.5 billion.

Grab has increasingly turned to acquisitions to support its growth this year. It bought U.S.-based Stash Financial at an enterprise value of $425 million and agreed to buy Foodpanda's Taiwan operations from Delivery Hero for $600 million.

The Atome deal would "bring a large external consumer-credit franchise inside another integrated regional platform," Singapore-based research and advisory firm Momentum Works said.

Independent [buy-now-pay-later] providers filled a gap while ecommerce and multipurpose digital platforms developed their own financial services, the firm said, noting that gap is narrowing as the platforms expand.

Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 15, 2026 06:55 ET (10:55 GMT)