London's Fresha hits unicorn status with KKR-led $80M raise

This article was published on May 22, 2026 The London-based beauty and wellness booking platform has joined the UK unicorn club at a $1bn-plus valuation, in a deal that lands while the broader SaaS complex is busy arguing about its own funeral. Fresha, the London-based booking and payments platform for salons and spas, has raised $80m from funds managed by KKR in a deal that values the company at more than $1bn, the company said on Thursday. The round, structured as primary growth capital, takes Fresha to unicorn status and lifts the total raised since 2015 to $285m. The cheque comes from KKR’s Next Generation Technology Growth fund, the firm’s growth-equity arm, which writes into companies that are already past the product-market-fit stage and are looking for scale capital rather than runway. The numbers Fresha disclosed alongside the announcement explain the appetite. The platform is used by more than 130,000 beauty and wellness businesses across the UK, Australasia, the Gulf, North America and parts of South-East Asia, and processes more than 35 million appointments a month, or roughly 420 million a year, against $15bn in annual gross merchandise value. Annual revenue run-rate s