More on Fintech
What We Believe
Fintech companies are innovating across broad categories—in banking, lending, insurance, real estate, and investing—both on the customer-facing side and in core infrastructure. We believe the combination of mobile, digital money, AI and machine learning, and new data sources offers startups a unique opportunity to leapfrog outdated infrastructure and compete with incumbent financial institutions to reimagine the way money moves.
Featured Content
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In the Vault: The Story of Apple Pay with Jennifer Bailey
The VP of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet discusses the challenges she confronted pushing Apple Pay into the mainstream, new Apple verticals on the horizon, and her advice for early entrepreneurs.
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In the Vault: Assessing AI Impact vs. Hype with John Stecher of Blackstone
Blackstone's CTO describes the qualities he looks for in early stage companies and predicts AI's impact on real estate, credit, and energy.
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Latin America: A Tech Powerhouse?
Latin America is emerging as a tech powerhouse, but it's not a one-size-fits-all market.
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In the Vault: AI and Banking Innovation with Tim Karpoff of Citi
A conversation about the role startups are playing in partnership with big banks and where Tim disagrees with the zeitgeist on the adoption of AI in financial services.
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“Death of a Salesforce”: Why AI Will Transform the Next Generation of Sales Tech
With LLMs and AI-enabled data infrastructure, common sales activities will be redefined and completely new seller workflows will emerge.
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In the Vault: Public Market and Macro Perspectives with Mark Casey of Capital Group
a16z General Partner David George interviews Capital Group's Mark Casey on his investment philosophy and what sends him into what he calls "barnacle mode."
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The AI Future Is Already Here, It’s Just Not Productized Yet
Here's where AI agents and software can have the most immediate impact on your business, and make you more efficient and productive.
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3 Questions With… Akash Shah, BNY
BNY's Akash Shah on the company's approach to adopting AI and what advice he would give to fintech startup founders.
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In the Vault: New Applications in Fintech with Plaid’s Zach Perret and Marqeta’s Simon Khalaf
a16z General Partner Angela Strange, Plaid CEO Zach Perret, and Marqeta CEO Simon Khalaf discuss how AI and fintech will shape the future of banking.
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3 Questions With… Varun Krishna, Rocket Companies
a16z General Partner Alex Rampell recently spoke to CEO of Rocket Companies Varun Krishna about his newest role, AI, and the future of real estate.
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AI + a16z
The stakes are high. The opportunities are profound. From the creation of new medicines to bolstering national defense, this is our vision for the AI-enabled future.
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AI’s Second Order Effects
There’s likely a whole category of non-AI companies and products that can FINALLY exist *because of the productivity gains of AI.*
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Banking on AI
a16z Fintech connects ambitious technology founders with financial services leaders who recognize the power of generative AI.
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In the Vault: Turning Developers Into Clients With Marco Argenti From Goldman Sachs
In this In the Vault episode, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti about fintech, financial services, and GenAI.
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In the Vault: Placing Multiple Bets on a ‘Mosaic of Solutions’ With Former Global Payments CEO Jeff Sloan
In this In the Vault episode, a16z General Partner Angela Strange talks with Jeff Sloan, former CEO of Global Payments, about industry trends and AI.
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In the Vault: Finding a Single Source of AI Truth With Marty Chavez From Sixth Street
In this In the Vault episode, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Sixth Street Partners' Marty Chavez about his storied career and AI's promise.
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Managing Your Facility and Tools to Automate the Process
We have provided many resources in this series for this stage of your business journey. We’d like to wrap up by focusing on how to manage debt post-closing.
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Forecasting Fintech’s Future and Keeping Culture Alive: A Q&A with the CEOs of BILL and Mercury
a16z’s Alex Immerman chats with Mercury cofounder and CEO Immad Akhund and BILL CEO René Lacerte about fintech's future.
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Putting Data in a Corner: LLMs and Financial Services Data
3 financial service giants cornered the market on data at the dawn of the digital age. What can founders learn from them?
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Three Questions with… Jamil Khan, H&R Block
Jamil Khan explains how H&R Block is using AI, as well as what advice he would give founders looking to build in this space.
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Investing in Crux
As students of financial markets, we’re keenly interested in moments of inflection which alter market structure, spawn dominant new institutions, and catalyze the growth of new asset classes. Historically, these shifts h...
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Investing in hyperexponential
Over the past decade, data infrastructure across industries has been modernized by many disruptors like Databricks, Fivetran, et al. The modern data stack has made it much easier for companies to ingest, store, query, an...
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My First 16: Launching a New Category with Modern Treasury’s Dimitri Dadiomov
a16z partner Seema Amble talks with Dimitri Dadiomov, the co-founder and CEO of Modern Treasury, about the challenges of creating a new category.
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Big Ideas in Tech for 2024
Smart energy grids. Voice-first companion apps. Programmable medicines. AI tools for kids. We asked over 40 partners across a16z to preview one big idea they believe will drive innovation in the coming year.
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My First 16: Creating a Supportive Builder Community with Plaid’s Zach Perret
Episode Transcript
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My First 16: Welding Yourself to Early Customers with Marqeta’s Jason Gardner
a16z partner Seema Amble talks with the founder and current executive chairman of Marqeta Jason Gardner about how to expand in multiple verticals.
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My First 16: Doubling Down on Founder-Led Sales with Pilot’s Waseem Daher
a16z partner Seema Amble talks with co-founder and CEO of Pilot Waseem Daher on pricing and never stepping away from doing founder-led sales.
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My First 16: Competing in a Crowd of Incumbents with Mercury’s Immad Akhund
a16z partner Seema Amble talks with co-founder and CEO of Mercury Immad Akhund about how to compete in a category already filled with incumbents.
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B2FI: Demystifying Software Sales Into Financial Institutions
We aim to demystify the “B2FI” (or “business to financial institution”) for fintech companies, with lessons from those who have experienced it.
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It’s Time to Raise Your Debt Facility: Execution Tactics for Founders
Embarking on a debt raise can be a daunting task and we aim to demystify the debt-raising process at large and navigate you through it.
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Investing in TipTop
TipTop creates tools that reduce the consumer code of owning products. They offer customers a guaranteed buyback price at the time of purchase, so they only pay for the product while they need it.
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Fintech Fuels Global Payments
How cross-border infrastructure, instant payments, and open banking advances are creating a more integrated, financially inclusive world.
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Software Transcends Borders—Why Not Money?
The company of the future is default global. Top fintech entrepreneurs are pursuing integrated cross-border payment infrastructure and full-stack solutions.
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Foreign Exchange 101: What Happens When You Send Money Abroad?
The process of moving money between countries is complicated and costly. Here's how foreign exchange works and what happens when you send money abroad.
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The UK Is a Fintech Regulatory Superpower
The UK is the goldilocks of financial services: big enough to be meaningful on a global scale, but small enough to make decisions faster than the U.S. or the rest of Europe.
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Why India Leads in Digital Payments
Fintech has the potential to fully drive India’s economy. One major factor: the Reserve Bank of India has enacted progressive regulations at a rapid pace.
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Fintech Sees Renewed Focus in Colombia
Advances in licensing and open finance, the promise of ubiquitous instant payments, and regulatory support for solutions are feeding a fintech surge.
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B2B Fintech Drives Market Disruption in Mexico
Through the introduction of open banking and other regulatory advances, the B2B sector is poised to reshape the financial landscape for enterprises in Mexico.
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Investing in Moment
a16z will lead the Series A of Moment, a new company building infrastructure that abstracts away the complexities of embedding fixed income investments in any application.
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BarbAIrians at the Gate: The Financial Opportunity of AI
Generative AI is likely going to usher in a far more profound method of company transformation.
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More Countries, More Problems: Selling AI Products Around the World is Still Too Hard
Many digital-first companies have been propelled by generative AI. However, selling these digital products globally is not a straightforward undertaking. Here's how to simplify the cross-border selling experience, get in front of the right customers, and build long-term value.
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Money on Autopilot: The Future of AI x Personal Finance
Thanks to generative AI, the much-discussed topic of “self-driving money” finally has a chance to achieve its potential.
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The B2B Fintech Pricing Journey
When pricing a new B2B fintech product or service, simplicity is the key, especially at the earliest stages.
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A Market Map of Brazil’s Credit Landscape
Though there has been a significant increase in the number of funds and banks offering debt financing to startups in Brazil, many founders in the country still find raising debt capital to be a complicated process. This resource offers a practical roadmap.
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Using Generative AI to Unlock Probabilistic Products
Those who complain about hallucinations miss the point. A dispersion of outputs (including hallucinations) will unlock a whole new category of product design: probabilistic products.
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Aligning Founder Superpowers with Product Cycles
At this early stage in generative AI, technologists and product pickers will likely have the biggest impact on which companies emerge as winners.
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Bat Out of Hell: Identifying Your Durable Advantage in Fintech
This deep dive explores the sustainable differentiation that results in a compounding flywheel, with a focus on financial services companies that sell commodity-like, nonphysical world products like money and insurance.
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The Opportunity for Healthcare x Fintech
How technology will make our healthcare system more intuitive, efficient, and cost-effective.
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Beyond Payments for High-Risk Industries
We believe there is a significant opportunity for startups to serve companies building in high-risk industries like games, sports betting, and cannabis.
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Financial Services Will Embrace Generative AI Faster Than You Think
The emergence of generative AI could yield the largest transformation the financial services market has seen in decades.
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The Future of Payments Is…Red?
Visa and Mastercard currently facilitate more than three-quarters of all credit card transactions in the United States, at a time when post-pandemic Americans are now using credit or debit cards for roughly 57% of all tr...
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Negotiating Your First Warehouse Facility: Trade-offs Across Terms
This article is the second of four installments in our new series, How Fintech Companies Can Simplify Their Funding Strategy. Read part one on Choosing the Right Funding Structure here.
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Investing in Method
Debt is daunting—its labyrinth of complex rules, opaque governing bodies, and unique vernacular makes it difficult for the average consumer to understand. Concepts like credit scores, APRs, retroactive interest, and coll...
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Investing in Cygnvs
Cyber incidents have reached a crisis level over the past decade. In 2021, the U.S. saw 1,862 data compromises, affecting nearly 300 million people (a nearly 100% increase from five years ago). Cybersecurity practitioner...
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Data: Asset Relativity (and the Case of Bay Area Housing) Updated (2022)
As we first shared in 2019, everything is relative — especially home prices in the Bay Area. These prices have continued to rise on an absolute basis over the last 12 years; the typical home in Palo Alto, for example, ro...
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How Founders Should Think About Cash Management
What counts as "cash," developing a plan for that cash, building an adaptable operating model, and dealing with a liquidity crisis.
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Serving the Multifamily Real Estate Industry with Software
Multifamily real estate in the U.S., which includes apartment buildings, condominiums, townhouses, and mixed-use developments, is one of the largest asset classes in the world. Approximately 44 million residences are con...
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Investing in Setpoint
Behind many of life’s most important financial transactions — be it buying a house, applying for a mortgage, getting a small business loan, or refinancing a personal credit card — exist a network of trust and credit rela...
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Escaping Hell’s Flywheel: Building Non-inflationary Distribution Channels
If you were interested in quickly launching a startup, here’s an easy formula for finding product market fit. First, identify an existing product in an industry with a low NPS (like most financial services) that has not...
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Investing in The Coterie
Historically, wealth managers offered consumers a choice: either put their money on autopilot (through an offering like Vanguard’s low-fee ETFs) or — if wealthy enough — be actively managed by an advisor at somewhere lik...
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Titan’s Clayton Gardner on How the Fintech Market is Changing
In this episode of a16z Live, we are joined by Titan co-founder and co-CEO Clayton Gardner; a16z General Partner Anish Acharya; and a16z growth partner, Alex Immerman. The trio starts their conversation by diving into th...
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Brazil’s Surprising Fintech Tailwind
Instant payments, tiered licensing for fintech startups, sandbox programs, and other regulatory changes have had a marked impact on financial services.
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Launching a Financial Product: How to Choose the Right Funding Structure
Choosing the right funding structure can have a meaningful impact on the trajectory of your company, its ability to scale, and your bottom line.
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Investing in MVMNT
Freight is quite literally one of the backbones of the U.S. economy. Every year, shippers spend $800 billion dollars moving goods across the country, and as everyone learned firsthand over the past two years, one small h...
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LVR: Quantifying the Cost of Providing Liquidity to Automated Market Makers
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Investing in Payall
As we write in our piece It’s All About The Money (Movement), moving money internationally is an opaque, fee-intensive process that requires two things: actually “moving” the money and leveraging onboarding and complianc...
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It’s All About the Money (Movement): Simplifying Cross-Border Payments
The way businesses move money internationally has not changed in decades. Why do cross-border transactions take so long and cost so much to complete? The distributed global ledger is to blame. Here are the three key wedges to create other types of business payments.
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Foundations for Successful Fintech Infrastructure (and Several Tradeoffs to Consider)
Over the past several years, the field of fintech infrastructure has exploded with venture capital investment and entrepreneurial attention. Between the emergence of Stripe, Plaid, and other category-defining decacorns;...
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Leading With Software When Building A Lending Business
As I reflect upon my experience building Bond Street (an SMB lending startup we sold to Goldman Sachs in 2017), one of the biggest challenges we faced was in scaling customer acquisition. In retrospect, there were two cr...
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The Company of the Future is Default Global
Much opportunity exists to build a modern software stack that supports the next generation of default global companies, from local employment law and talent sourcing to multi-country incorporation and expense management.
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Investing in Stoik
Buying traditional insurance is a no-brainer if you want to protect assets of value—be it your life, your home, or your business. If you own, say, a building, chances are you’ll want to minimize your risk against fires,...
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Finding the Leading Wealth Management Offerings of Tomorrow
At its core, wealth management is fairly straightforward: an advisor helps a customer optimize their tax and investment strategies to maximize wealth creation and preservation. But while this premise may seem simple, its...
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Investing in Datanomik
We wrote about the CFO in crisis mode and the need for better software to be built for the finance suite. If the average CFO is in a crisis, the emerging markets CFO serve are in an even bigger crisis! In LatAm for insta...
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Investing in Cross River
The fintech revolution, in which every company becomes a fintech company, is one of the most significant technology trends this decade. We are big believers in this vision and expect that in the next 10+ years, the $2 tr...
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Investing in Latitud
Building and scaling a company is HARD. The mechanics of just getting set up should not be.
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Investing in Flock
Being a landlord sounds like a terrific thing, and it has been a powerful path to wealth creation for so many people for centuries. But there are two problems:
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Investing in Sardine
I am excited to announce our investment in Sardine – aptly named for the “fishy” behavior this company will prevent. Sardine provides instant, risk-free ACH & card settlement to fintech and crypto companies enabling...
Meet the Fintech Team
What is the future of finance? Our team of investors knows first-hand how innovations in banking and lending can pave the way for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow harnessing the power of digital money and AI. We’re here to navigate them to the top.
Introducing In the Vault: a new podcast series by a16z
Featuring interviews with key decision makers from the biggest Financial Institutions in the world.
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Operating Team
IPO: AFRM
Acquired By: SoundHound
IPO: BOKU
Acquired By: Rho
IPO: OPEN
Acquired By: JPMC Employee Pension
Acquired By: Robinhood
Acquired By: Ticketmaster
IPO: HOOD
Acquired By: Intuit
Acquired By: Silicon Valley Bank
Acquired By: Airbnb
Acquired By: Envestnet
DPO: WPLCF
Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described on this page are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. Exits include current and former a16z portfolio companies which have been acquired as well as companies which have undergone an initial public offering or direct public offering of shares. Certain publicly traded companies on this list may still be held in Andreessen Horowitz funds. A list of investments made by funds managed by a16z is available here: https://a16z.com/investments/. Excluded from this list are investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets. Further, the list of investments is updated monthly and as such may not reflect most recent a16z investments. Past results of Andreessen Horowitz’s investments, pooled investment vehicles, or investment strategies are not necessarily indicative of future results.
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