New York fintech Skalar has emerged from stealth with more than $125 million in committed financing for technology companies. Founded in January 2026 by Sebastián Cárdenas and Daniel Castrillón, Skalar provides non-dilutive capital for customer acquisition, with repayment linked to revenue generated by acquired customers. Its seed round was led by Monashees, while General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund provides debt capital.
Skalar is a New York-based fintech that has recently emerged from stealth with a different approach to startup financing.
Founded in January 2026 by Sebastián Cárdenas and Daniel Castrillón, the company is focused on one of the biggest expenses for growing technology businesses: customer acquisition.
Instead of providing traditional venture capital or conventional debt, Skalar finances sales and marketing spending and links repayment to the revenue generated by the customers acquired through that spending.
Skalar has announced more than $125 million in committed financing across technology companies in the United States and Latin America.
Importantly, this is not a $125 million fundraising round for Skalar itself.
The company has an undisclosed seed round led by Monashees and a financing partnership with General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund. The $125 million figure refers to committed financing that Skalar plans to deploy to its client companies.
Skalar focuses on companies that already demonstrate product-market fit and spend approximately $100,000 to $3 million each month acquiring customers.
The company provides capital for those customer-acquisition activities.
Instead of requiring a fixed repayment schedule, Skalar's model ties repayment to revenue generated by the customers acquired through the financed spending.
That creates a different structure from traditional venture debt.
If the acquired customers generate revenue, repayment follows that performance. If the customers underperform, Skalar shares some of the downside risk.
For a growing startup, customer acquisition can create a difficult capital problem.
A company may know that spending money today can generate revenue later, but it still needs capital to bridge that gap.
Founders traditionally have several choices:
Skalar is attempting to create another option: financing specifically matched to customer-acquisition economics.
Sebastián Cárdenas serves as Co-Founder and CEO, while Daniel Castrillón is Co-Founder and COO.
Cárdenas previously worked at Monashees and helped introduce General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund model to portfolio companies in Latin America.
The concept behind Skalar was initially tested within the Monashees ecosystem before being developed into an independent company.
Skalar is targeting a relatively specific customer segment rather than attempting to finance every startup.
Its ideal customers have:
The company has said it intends to remain selective, initially working with a limited number of companies rather than maximising customer volume.
One of Skalar's central ideas is that different business expenses should use different forms of capital.
Equity can be useful for uncertain investments such as research, product development and major strategic bets.
But predictable customer-acquisition spending may be better suited to a financing structure linked to the revenue that spending produces.
This distinction is at the centre of Skalar's proposition.
The model could become particularly relevant for AI-native startups.
AI companies can sometimes grow rapidly but also face significant spending requirements around sales, infrastructure and customer acquisition.
If a startup has strong unit economics but needs additional capital to accelerate customer acquisition, performance-linked financing could provide an alternative to raising another equity round.
However, the model still depends on accurate data, reliable attribution and strong customer economics.
Skalar's headline commitment is significant, but its long-term success will depend on how the financing performs in practice.
Important metrics will include:
These metrics will reveal whether performance-linked financing can become a durable category rather than simply an alternative funding product.
Skalar's launch highlights a broader evolution in startup financing.
Founders are increasingly looking beyond traditional venture capital for ways to fund predictable parts of their businesses.
The interesting idea is not simply raising more money.
It is matching the type of capital to the specific economic activity that capital is funding.
For a company with uncertain research outcomes, equity may make sense.
For a company with predictable customer-acquisition economics, a performance-linked structure may be more suitable.
Skalar is entering the market with a focused proposition: help growth-stage technology companies finance customer acquisition without immediately giving up additional ownership.
Its more than $125 million in committed client financing gives the company an early operating footprint, while the undisclosed seed round and General Catalyst partnership provide the capital infrastructure behind the model.
The next chapter will depend on whether Skalar can prove that financing customer acquisition against realised revenue can scale sustainably across a much larger group of technology companies.
