Toast, the Boston-based restaurant payments startup, has raised a whopping $400 million in Series F funding.
The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, TPG, Greenoaks Capital and Tiger Global Management, with participation from Durable Capital Partners LP, TCV, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, G Squared, Light Street Capital, Alta Park Capital and others.
With the new funding, Toast says its valuation is now $4.9 billion. It was just under two years ago that the company hit unicorn status with a $115 million Series D round, which brought its valuation to $1.4 billion. Toast's Series E round closed in April last year at $250 million.
Toast plans to use the funding to build out its restaurant management platform with new products, investments in hardware and software capabilities and new financial products to help restaurant owners grow their businesses. That's in line with some of the company's recent moves: In November, the company launched Toast Capital, a subsidiary that gives restaurants access to capital for expansion, and in January last year, it debuted the Toast TakeOut app, allowing customers to place orders for pickup.
"You’re going to continue to see us go really deep on different financial services that we can help with for the merchant," Tim Barash, Toast's chief financial officer, said in an interview with BostInno. "In a world that is traditionally underserved by financial services, this will help empower them."
Toast also recently acquired StratEx, a payroll software startup based in Chicago. Barash said the company may dip its toes into more M&A in 2020, but there are no concrete plans for acquisitions at the moment.
In addition to product expansion, Toast is on a fast-paced hiring spree: Barash said the company will hire some 1,000 new employees this year across its locations in Boston, Chicago, Omaha and Dublin, Ireland, along with remote employees. He declined to give an exact projected headcount for the Boston headquarters but said he expects "quite a few people" will be based in Beantown.
"I think the Boston tech community is the best it's ever been and growing really fast," Barash said. "We’re aggressively building this company for scale so we can help our customers in many different ways. Some of the things that we’ll roll out over the next couple of years are pretty unexpected, but they’re all things that will help the restaurant community."
