Grab Holdings (NASDAQ: GRAB) has agreed to take a controlling interest in Atome Financial, a Singapore-based digital lending platform owned by Advance Intelligence Group, in a two-stage transaction that would significantly expand Grab’s consumer-credit business across Southeast Asia.
Under definitive agreements announced on 15 September 2026, Grab will first purchase a 60 percent equity stake in Atome Financial for $1.49 billion in cash.
About $260 million of that amount is intended as primary growth capital for the target.
The initial stage is expected to close by the third quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory clearances and customary conditions.
Grab plans to fund the purchase from existing cash reserves and, once the deal completes, to consolidate Atome into its financial services segment.
Atome’s current leadership is slated to remain in place and continue running the business.
Grab has also committed to buy the remaining 40 percent roughly two years after the first closing.
That second purchase will not use a fixed price.
Instead, the valuation will be determined by a pre-agreed formula based on Atome’s results in the six months immediately before the later closing.
The formula applies a 13 times multiple to annualized adjusted EBITDA and a 2.5 times multiple to annualized revenue, weighted 75 percent and 25 percent respectively.
The resulting equity value is bounded by a $2 billion floor and a $4.5 billion ceiling.
At least half of the later consideration is to be paid in cash.Atome operates in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.
Its products include buy-now-pay-later loans, consumer cash loans, BNPL cards and other digital lending.
Company figures cited in the announcement put cumulative transacted users at 25 million and the gross loan book at about $1 billion.
Grab already offers payments, digital banking, insurance and lending, and counts nearly 54 million monthly transacting users.
The companies argue the footprints overlap little and that pairing Atome’s AI-based underwriting with Grab’s ecosystem data could widen credit access while supporting tighter risk control.
Grab said the combined financial services operations, including Atome, are expected to generate $500 million in adjusted EBITDA by 2028, with a gross loan portfolio of more than $6 billion.
Alongside the deal, the company raised its group 2028 targets to $1.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA and more than 30 percent compound annual revenue growth from 2025 to 2028.
Management framed consumer lending as a next growth engine beside mobility and deliveries.
Grab President and Chief Operating Officer Alex Hungate said Atome’s credit technology should help scale the wider platform.
CFO Peter Oey described the staged structure as a way to limit capital-allocation risk and said the combination contributed to the higher 2028 outlook.
The announcement stresses that licensing, consumer-protection, privacy and responsible-lending rules in each market remain unchanged.
Completion is not guaranteed and depends on approvals that could take more than a year. If both stages close, Grab would own the whole of Atome under a structure designed to tie the final price to demonstrated performance rather than an upfront full valuation.