Toast Lands $400M, Bringing Valuation To Nearly $5B

Restaurant management startup Toast raised $400 million in a new round of funding, boosting its valuation to $4.9 billion.

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Bessemer Venture Partners, TPG, Greenoaks Capital, and Tiger Global Management led the round, which brings Toast’s total funding to around $900 million, according to Crunchbase.

Toast was last valued at about $2.75 billion after it raised $250 million in its Series E funding round in March 2019. It also counts firms such as T. Rowe Price and Generation Investment Management as investors.

The new funding will be used to invest in new products across hardware, software, and financial services to address pain points in the restaurant industry, according to chief financial officer Tim Barash.

“We’re going to be innovating in helping the entire community whether it’s merchants, whether it’s guests, whether it’s employees of the restaurants, to be successful,” Barash said in an interview with Crunchbase News.

The company will also be hiring hundreds of, if not more than a thousand, new employees as well, Barash said. Toast, which was founded in 2013, is based in Boston and has offices in Dublin, Ireland; Omaha, Nebraska, and Chicago, Illinois.

IPO on the horizon?

“Tens of thousands” of new restaurants joined Toast’s platform last year, and the company’s revenue grew 109 percent as a result, according to a statement. Barash declined to give a specific figure of how many restaurants were part of the Toast community, but also said it was “tens of thousands.”

As for what’s next for the company, Barash said Toast will be focused on its product offerings in the immediate future.

“I think in the next few years it will be a goal to go public,” Barash said. “I think when that is will depend on market context and focus for the Toast team.”

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias