Latest news with #Plaid

Finextra
15 hours ago
- Business
- Finextra
Ex-Plaid exec Farid Sedjelmaci joins Stacks as new COO
Stacks AI, the fast-growing startup on a mission to reinvent the financial close, has just appointed Farid Sedjelmaci as its new COO. 0 Ex-Plaid, Farid led its European expansion and has 20+ years experience scaling B2B fintech and SaaS firms. A former McKinsey partner, Farid is based in London and is focused on scaling Stacks' growth in what's becoming its fastest-growing market: the UK. Farid joins a team of ex-Uber, Plaid and Mollie team members at Stacks. Stacks is seeing strong adoption and momentum in the UK and US since launch in February 2025. Setting the pace for AI adoption in finance, the company has nearly tripled its customer base and is creating real impact for companies - namely it cuts manual work by 97% to condense financial close time. As a result, finance teams using Stacks have more time for digging into business insights, instead of repetitive, manual tasks. Since its launch in February 2025, has attracted new clients across diverse sectors, including Bloom & Wild, Motorway, DataSnipper, Supermetrics and OnBoard. The go-to choice for forward-thinking CFOs and their teams, Stacks is helping finance teams reduce financial close time by 50% reducing the manual inputs needed by 97%. "Finance teams are under real pressure, from talent shortages to intense year-end demands, with hours often hitting 70+ a week at crunch time. It's no surprise UK CFOs are turning to AI to ease the manual load on their teams and free up time for more strategic work," said Albert Malikov, Founder & CEO of Stacks."We're excited to welcome Farid as we expand our footprint in the UK and across Europe to meet this demand. His track record and operational expertise scaling fintechs like Plaid in Europe makes him a strong fit, helping us deliver even more value to our customers as we continue to redefine what's possible in the financial close,' he added. Stacks' momentum comes as companies of all sizes look to implement agentic AI to smooth operations, increase productivity, and find new opportunities for growth.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Three powerhouses cover how to prepare now for your later-stage raise at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 hits Moscone West in San Francisco this October 27–29, and if you're building with big funding goals in mind, the session on preparing for your later-stage raise needs to be on your radar. Join three powerhouse voices in venture and AI-driven innovation as they share what it really takes to close major rounds — long before you're in the room with investors. This panel, taking place October 29 on the Builders Stage, is a roadmap for any founder who knows that Series C doesn't start at Series C. Raising late-stage capital is about more than hitting big revenue numbers. It's about telling the right story, tracking the right metrics, and building relationships that compound over time. This session goes beyond pitch decks to uncover the strategies founders should be thinking about now to land meaningful funding later. Expect sharp insights, candid reflections, and real frameworks you can take back to your startup. Zeya Yang, partner at IVP, brings a rare dual lens to the table as both an investor and former product leader. With past experience at a16z, Plaid, and Dropbox, Zeya's focus is on AI-native startups that are reshaping the way we work. He's backed companies like Graphite, Macro, and Tennr, and brings sharp product instincts and founder-first thinking to every cap table he joins. Lila Preston, head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, has been scaling impact-focused companies since 2004. She sits on the boards of nature-forward brands like Nature's Fynd and Pivot Bio, and she draws on a global perspective shaped by work across Latin America, the UK, and the U.S. Lila's blend of financial acumen and mission-driven investing makes her uniquely equipped to guide founders eyeing long-term growth. Andrea Thomaz, CEO and co-founder of Diligent Robotics, brings the founder lens. A social robotics pioneer, she's led groundbreaking work in AI and automation, built robots featured everywhere from The New York Times to Popular Science, and scaled a hardware startup tackling real-world problems. Her company is reshaping the healthcare workforce with collaborative robotics—and she knows firsthand how to build investor trust around moonshot tech. Join 10,000+ startup and VC leaders for this must-attend conversation — and be part of one of the most anticipated tech conferences of the year. It's all happening at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, where today's decisions meet tomorrow's scale. Register now and save up to $675 before prices increase. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


Axios
3 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Exclusive: Spinwheel raises $30M to streamline debt management
Spinwheel, a fintech startup focused on consumer debt management, raised $30 million in Series A funding, CEO Tomás Campos tells Axios exclusively. Why it matters: Debt management solutions remain fragmented and difficult for users to manage effectively. How it works: Spinwheel helps fintech platforms and banks authenticate users, automate data retrieval and facilitate payments, reducing the friction of managing consumer debt. With a person's phone number and date of birth, the company can find and connect to all of an end user's liability accounts and make payments on their behalf. "We decided we're not going to depend on the user and password because the friction is too high and it doesn't prove it's actually the user," Campos says. The big picture: Consumer fintechs face challenges in getting users to authenticate and connect all of their various financial accounts. High friction from login requirements often leads to user drop-off and incomplete financial pictures. Between the lines: The company's unique feature is combining data aggregation capabilities, like those of Plaid, with payment processing functionality similar to Stripe's. "We're not just aggregating data. We're actually a payment network that can automate real transactions for consumers," Campos says. Flashback: Spinwheel initially focused on student loan repayment but pivoted to a broader approach to managing various types of consumer debt. Customers now include PFM platforms like Monarch Money, marketplaces like NerdWallet or Credit Karma, and lenders. By the numbers: Spinwheel has connected over $1.5 trillion in consumer liabilities across 165 million accounts since its founding. It has processed over 50 million AI-powered payment transactions, leading to revenue increasing 760% over the past 18 months. Zoom in: F-Prime Capital led the round, which included participation from QED Investors, Foundation Capital and Fika Ventures.


Time Magazine
6 days ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Plaid
Chances are decent that some of the apps that run your financial life—from how you pay friends back for dinner to how you invest—have a common connection: Plaid. Connecting over 12,000 financial institutions and 8,000 fintech apps including Robinhood, Venmo, and Google Wallet, Plaid provides the digital plumbing through which money flows. 'I don't want to give ourselves too much credit, but I think we were a meaningful part of helping financial services become as digital as they are today,' says co-founder and CEO Zach Perret. The sheer breadth of its connections offers Plaid a uniquely comprehensive view of financial activity, which it now leverages to combat fraud. In 2024, it also began using real-time cash flow data to help businesses go beyond credit scores when assessing consumer risk levels. The startup, valued at $6.1 billion, says this opens new avenues for immigrants, gig workers and others with limited credit profiles to access loans. Disclosure: Investors in Plaid include Salesforce, where TIME co-chair and owner Marc Benioff is CEO.


Business Wire
6 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Pylon and Plaid Team Up to Streamline Verification in Programmatic Mortgage Originations
MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pylon, the programmatic mortgage infrastructure provider for modern originators, today announced a partnership with Plaid, a leading open finance data platform. Through this integration, Pylon customers can seamlessly access Plaid's income and asset verification services –critical data sources that power key stages of the mortgage underwriting process–without additional steps. This integration brings us closer to fully programmatic originations. Verifying a borrower's income, assets, and employment is essential to underwriting, yet most lenders still rely on manual uploads of documents like paystubs and bank statements. With Plaid embedded in Pylon's mortgage automation software, asset and income data can be programmatically retrieved and verified. This accelerates automated mortgage processing, reduces manual work and processing costs, and improves the borrower experience. Whether customers use Pylon's out-of-the-box Elements or build on the API, Plaid is fully embedded. Pylon handles credentialing, compliance, and billing on behalf of its customers, enabling a frictionless, secure way to activate verified data sources as part of a fully automated origination flow. Plaid is an approved vendor under both Fannie Mae's Day 1 Certainty and Freddie Mac's AIM initiatives, allowing verified asset data to bypass manual underwriting. When combined with Pylon's automated credit, compliance, and capital workflows, these verified data sources accelerate automated mortgage processing by moving loans faster from application to underwriting and, in many cases, directly to closing. 'Plaid is the market leader in financial data access, and the ability to instantly verify assets and incomes is an important piece of mortgage automation,' said Trent Hedge, CEO of Pylon. 'This integration brings us closer to fully programmatic originations. We look forward to expanding our partnership with Plaid in the future.' To see how the Pylon + Plaid integration can streamline your mortgage origination, contact us at sales@