Airwallex expands from cross-border payments to autonomous finance—though president Lucy Liu says it’s still ‘not the best time’ for an IPO

Airwallex president Lucy Liu invokes a car metaphor to describe one of her company’s newest products.

“It’s like assisted driving, like you have in a Tesla ,” she says to describe T:0, an automated bookkeeping system that can run a company’s entire financial department on its own.

“You still have someone in the driver’s seat, but the car really drives itself.” T:0 is part of a broader pivot for Airwallex, which got its start in Australia, and has emerged as a major global player in fintech and payments.

Like platforms like Wise and Revolut, its business first grew alongside traditional industries that rely on cross-border payments, such as e-commerce, gaming, and online travel.

But as AI changes how companies approach aspects of their business, including subscriptions and payment models, fintech firms like Airwallex are changing too.

In late June, Airwallex raised $320 million in a Series H funding round led by Addition, a returning investor, alongside Baillie Gifford, T.

Rowe Price , Amex Ventures, and Washington University in St.

Louis.

The round valued Airwallex at $11 billion, up from the $8 billion valuation the startup got in December, when it raised $330 million in another Addition-led funding round.

CEO Jack Zhang, in a statement at the time, said the money would help the company “move faster into Airwallex’s next chapter: autonomous finance, agentic commerce, and the infrastructure to power both.” “Our fundraising has been quite rapid over the past two years,” Liu tells Fortune , adding that this most recent round came as a result of “ongoing conversations” with existing investors like Addition.

“We have a lot ahead of us, and we just want to be able to have enough capital to fast-charge our plans.” Chasing customers across borders Airwallex was founded in Melbourne, Australia over a decade ago to help businesses move money across borders.

Founders Jack Zhang and Max Li have credited the difficulties in running a coffee shop that imported goods from overseas as the inspiration for the business.

The platform now serves over 675,000 businesses, with over $1 billion in annualized run rate revenue.

Liu declined to give specific numbers about profitability, yet noted that the company was “EBITDA positive” and had a “healthy gross margin.” Now, as Airwallex leans into AI, it is touting two new features: the automated bookkeeping system T:0, and Ari, an agentic consumer wallet designed for one-click checkout.