Embedded finance -- where financial services companies and others bring in different kinds of fintech technology by way of APIs to enhance their own offerings with more data and functionality -- remains a growing opportunity, both to help fuel new business and to help incumbents get up to speed with their disruptors. In the latest development, Bud Financial, a provider of an AI-based open banking platform that is used by large banks and others to help power lending and other personalized products, has raised $80 million.

Ed Maslaveckas, the CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch the investment, a Series B, will be used both for R&D -- specifically to further build out its artificial intelligence-based tools -- and for international expansion. The company today's tech appears to be based around natural language, and that language being English: it is live in the UK, Australia and New Zealand and it plans to expand to two more countries this year. It won't say which ones but it has a lot of multinational investors, including some out of another English-speaking market, the United States.

Bud is also not disclosing customer or transaction numbers, nor revenues, nor its valuation with this round, but here is some context on that. This round is being led by Bellis Phantom Holdco ltd, which is an indirect affiliate of investment funds managed by TDR Capital (this is a big PE investor whose name isn't typically associated with tech investments, with its portfolio including the likes of the Pizza Express chain of restaurants and ex-Walmart supermarket giant Asda). Others in this round include SEI investments Outward VC and others.

More context: In 2019, pre-pandemic, Bud raised $20 million from an impressive group that included HSBC, Goldman Sachs, ANZ, Investec’s INVC fund, and InnoCells (the corporate venture arm of Banco Sabadell) -- 25 investors in all. PitchBook notes that earlier investments, pre-this round, gave the company a modest valuation of less than $58 million. I'm guessing that number is definitely higher now, although with all the pressure we've been seeing in the market, and the many people who have spoken about how valuations are definitely depressed, it's anyone's guess as to what Bud's valuation might be now.