Simplifying Your Fintech Funding Strategy

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."

Here's where AI agents and software can have the most immediate impact on your business, and make you more efficient and productive.

BNY's Akash Shah on the company's approach to adopting AI and what advice he would give to fintech startup founders.

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.

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. 

In May’s Fintech newsletter, we introduce our new podcast “In the Vault,” where we share exclusive conversations with financial industry leaders.

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.

There’s likely a whole category of non-AI companies and products that can FINALLY exist *because of the productivity gains of AI.*

a16z Fintech connects ambitious technology founders with financial services leaders who recognize the power of generative AI.

In this In the Vault episode, a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti about fintech, financial services, and GenAI.

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.

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.

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.

a16z’s Alex Immerman chats with Mercury cofounder and CEO Immad Akhund and BILL CEO René Lacerte about fintech's future.

In this month’s newsletter, we gauge where AI solutions are emerging in financial services, Reuters’ AI war chest, and the big real estate settlement.

3 financial service giants cornered the market on data at the dawn of the digital age. What can founders learn from them?

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.

In this newsletter, we launch some new features: a monthly Q&A with a fintech leader and a "chart of the month" on a market trend.

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...

As 2024 kicks firmly into gear, we’re keeping our eyes on some interesting stats and observations that may yield bigger developments down the line. Here are 4 things that stood out to us this month.

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...

a16z partner Seema Amble talks with Dimitri Dadiomov, the co-founder and CEO of Modern Treasury, about the challenges of creating a new category.

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.

Episode Transcript

a16z partner Seema Amble talks with the founder and current executive chairman of Marqeta Jason Gardner about how to expand in multiple verticals.

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.

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.

The CFPB published its proposed Personal Financial Data Rights rule, which could usher in an open banking shift.

We aim to demystify the “B2FI” (or “business to financial institution”) for fintech companies, with lessons from those who have experienced it.

金融業界ではもう10年以上にわたって、人工知能（AI）と機械学習（ML）が引受業務の改善や詐欺防止システムの強化などに幅広く利用されている。大規模言語モデル（LLM）に基づく生成AIによって飛躍的な進歩が可能になり、教育、ゲーム、コマースのあり方そのものまで変わってきた。これまでは既存のデータから予測したり分類することが主なAI/MLの使い道だったが、生成AIを使えばこれまでにない新たなサービスを生み出すことができる。

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.

a16z’s Fintech partners analyze Intuit’s new AI assistant, JPM’s partnership with Gusto, and mark a recent embedded fintech development.

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.

How cross-border infrastructure, instant payments, and open banking advances are creating a more integrated, financially inclusive world.

The company of the future is default global. Top fintech entrepreneurs are pursuing integrated cross-border payment infrastructure and full-stack solutions.

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.

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.

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.

Advances in licensing and open finance, the promise of ubiquitous instant payments, and regulatory support for solutions are feeding a fintech surge.

Through the introduction of open banking and other regulatory advances, the B2B sector is poised to reshape the financial landscape for enterprises in Mexico.

Softwares são globais por natureza e transcendem fronteiras com facilidade. A globalização do dinheiro, no entanto, é um desafio muito maior.

A medida que la compañía del futuro se vuelve global por defecto, ahora existe un verdadero catalizador para el cambio. Los principales emprendedores buscan una infraestructura transfronteriza que sea más fácil de usar e integrar, así como soluciones completas para las propias empresas.

El setenta y seis por ciento de los colombianos utilizan servicios de tecnología financiera, la tasa de adopción de tecnología financiera más alta en América Latina. Esa tendencia está reforzada por los avances en licencias y finanzas abiertas, la promesa de pagos instantáneos universales y el apoyo regulatorio para soluciones innovadoras de tecnología financiera.

En los últimos años, México ha sido testigo del crecimiento de la industria de tecnología financiera, particularmente en el sector negocio a negocio (business-to-business, B2B). Esta evolución se vio acelerada por cambios normativos que impulsan la innovación y la competencia dentro del panorama de la tecnología financiera.

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.

Generative AI is likely going to usher in a far more profound method of company transformation.

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.

Thanks to generative AI, the much-discussed topic of “self-driving money” finally has a chance to achieve its potential.

Pieter van der Does, co-CEO of Adyen, Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi, and Kristo Käärmann, CEO of Wise, sat down with a16z Partner Alex Immerman.

If you’re looking for something fun, or a bit more business-minded, to read, watch, or listen to, a16z’s Fintech partners have you covered.

When pricing a new B2B fintech product or service, simplicity is the key, especially at the earliest stages.

Dando continuidade a nossos artigos sobre mercado de capital de dívida, decidimos nos deter um pouco no estudo do panorama de crédito no Brasil.

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.

How large language models could help gather relevant data for with more complex underwriting processes, like commercial and life insurance.

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.

At this early stage in generative AI, technologists and product pickers will likely have the biggest impact on which companies emerge as winners. 

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.

How technology will make our healthcare system more intuitive, efficient, and cost-effective.

We believe there is a significant opportunity for startups to serve companies building in high-risk industries like games, sports betting, and cannabis.

The emergence of generative AI could yield the largest transformation the financial services market has seen in decades.

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...

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.

Today’s startups are harder-pressed to manufacture explosive growth in short periods of time. Yet that's what they need to do to compete with big firms.

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...

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...

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...

What counts as "cash," developing a plan for that cash, building an adaptable operating model, and dealing with a liquidity crisis.

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...

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...