Credibur has connected clients managing €2 billion in structured debt portfolios to its continuous monitoring and reconciliation platform, achieving this milestone six months after its pre-seed funding.
Kalshi has mostly done things by the books, cozying up to the federal government in search of regulation and unmitigated approval. Meanwhile, Polymarket has seemed to make its own rules, letting users bet on controversial topics like civil war and nuclear detonation to rake in massive profits.
February's headline number was lifted considerably by four rounds of $200M or more - Vestwell ($385M), Runway ($315M), Talkiatry ($210M), and Whop ($200M) - that collectively contributed $1.11B to the monthly total. The 50.6% capital increase over January despite a 32.7% drop in deal count tells a clear story: fewer, larger rounds defined February.
I had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. I chose the latter. We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.
Laplanche, who was also the co-founder of LendingClub before leading Upgrade to a $7.3 billion valuation, was unsparing in a recent interview with Fortune. The fintech sector itself, he claimed, "would not even exist if, frankly, banks had done a better job really delighting their customers with product innovation that moves the needle," Laplanche said, arguing that the industry's reliance on "nickel and dime" fees and "unpredictable" costs created the very void that he's spent his whole career filling.
Investors have committed new capital to fintech company MyCredit, backing its strategy of scaling technology-driven credit platforms rather than a conventional lending operation. The investment reflects a broader shift in fintech funding toward platforms where software, data infrastructure and AI form the primary drivers of innovation, growth, enabling companies to expand across markets without proportional increases in staffing or operational complexity.
After working on the compliance team at the stablecoin infrastructure company Paxos, Lawrence decided to ride the generative AI wave and enter one of the first Y Combinator batches after the launch of ChatGPT. His thesis was that anti-money laundering and know-your-customer compliance operations would be one of the breakout use cases for applying AI to financial services. Lawrence's bet turned out to be prescient.
Step, which raised half a billion in funding and has grown to over 7 million users, offers financial services geared toward Gen Z to help them build credit, save money, and invest. The company has attracted celebrity investors like Charli D'Amelio, Will Smith, The Chainsmokers, and Stephen Curry, in addition to venture firms like General Catalyst, Coatue, and the payments company Stripe.
What's fascinating about this season of "Industry" is how well it speaks to this moment. Tender starts as a payment processing platform for adult content. The show references the very real (and still controversial) Online Safety Bill that the UK introduced, which has led to age verification and other enhanced rules for consuming adult content online. Because of its affiliation with adult content, Tender finds itself at odds with the new government's regulation and must pivot or die, as the saying goes.
This past year, Visa Inc. ( NYSE: V) has unveiled a scam disruption initiative, adoption of its "Tap to Phone" technology has soared, it unveiled its vision for artificial intelligence (AI) in commerce, and it expanded its capabilities in the digital currency space. The company also has launched a pilot program enabling businesses and platforms to send payouts directly to stablecoin wallets. All this has helped buoy the stock despite economic uncertainty.
I was a CFO myself for five years previously before going into venture [...] We had thousands and thousands of customers, and we would have several people in my team that were basically just replying to queries and chasing people all day.
SoFi Technologies (Nasdaq: SOFI) crossed the $1 billion quarterly revenue threshold for the first time in company history, delivering Q4 2025 results that beat estimates across the board while adding a record 1 million new members. The fintech platform reported revenue of $1.01 billion versus the $982 million consensus, alongside GAAP EPS of $0.13 that surpassed the $0.12 estimate by 8%.
Mine, a credit card and financial planning company founded by two Gen Z college dropouts, is attempting to buck the trend. Mine is announcing $14 million in fresh funding in a 359 Capital-led Series A, with participation from existing investor Kleiner Perkins. Cofounders Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith are confident they can convince their generation to stop spending their hard-earned money on betting whether the U.S. will invade Greenland or Eric Adams's latest memecoin.
So imagine this: The year is 2016. You open Instagram (just a six-year-old app at that point) and posts of King Kylie and videos of the viral mannequin challenge flood your feed. As social media booms, so does the consumer industry. Many of today's cult-followed brands are launching and growing -like Khloe Kardashian and Emma Grede's Good American jeans, Jen Rubio and Steph Korey's Away luggage, and now megapopular health tracker Oura, to name a few.
