Gilion appoints Oscar Werner to lead its growth & lending platform

By Gloria Methri

Gilion (formerly Ark Kapital), the Swedish Growth & Lending platform, has appointed Oscar Werner as its new CEO. Werner is succeeding co-founder and CEO Oliver Hildebrandt, who is transitioning to operating Chairman of the Board.

The change in leadership takes place as the company embarks on the next phase in mainstreaming debt as a data-driven funding product, while in tandem rolling out growth analytics tools tailored for the tech community.

Werner most recently served as the CEO of Sinch, a specialist in CPaaS (Communication Platform as a Service). The company services more than 150,000 businesses, including 8 out of the 10 largest US tech companies, customers include Google, Uber, PayPal, and Visa.‍

“We have reached a stage where we need a master scaler. Oscar scaled Sinch to one of Europe’s most successful technology companies alongside other Swedish stars such as Klarna and Spotify, and is one of the most prominent tech CEOs from our region”, said Oliver Hildebrandt, co-founder and operating Chairman of the Board at Gilion. “As a founder and serial entrepreneur, I can’t think of anyone more suited to take on the role of CEO and guide Gilion towards becoming a global leader in transforming funding and growth forecasting for both tech companies and its investors.” ‍

Werner has extensive experience scaling international technology companies, before Sinch he served as President of Tobii Tech, the business unit that builds Tobii’s Computer Vision & AI technology.

“Simply put, credit decisions will move from being made on static and old data to lots of real-time data. And AI will complement the human ability to assess what is a solid business,” said Oscar Werner, newly appointed CEO at Gilion. “This shift should logically happen, without question. Will Gilion be the winner? Well, after having presented lots of Gilion term sheets to startup CEOs and looked at hundreds of companies on the Gilion platform – it is obvious that they are onto something.”‍