Plaid, The Fintech Startup, Has Raised $250M at a $2.65B Valuation
The company announced their latest round and the addition of Venture Capitalist Mary Meeker to the company's board.
The Fintech startup firm Plaid has reached a multibillion-dollar valuation. A much coveted Silicon Valley milestone. The company announced the $250 million round on Tuesday. The latest round was led by Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker, an industry veteran who will also be joining the board of directors. Other participants of the funding round were Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures, along with existing investors Goldman Sachs, NEA and Spark Capital.
According to sources familiar with the situation, this latest funding round brings the company's current valuation to $2.65 Billion. A significant increase from the $200+ Million valuations placed on the firm in its previous $44 Million funding round.
"We've been really fortunate to have incredible growth in the fintech ecosystem and have been a key partner in driving that," Plaid CEO Zach Perret told CNBC in a phone interview.
As of December, the company said 25 percent of people in the United States with bank accounts have connected to Plaid through an app — a 13 percent increase from last year.
Plaid's Core business
Founded by Zach Perret and William Hockey in 2013, Plaid is essentially a conduit between fintech app companies and U.S banks. The company provides API-based data which allows other fintech firms to build consumer-facing banking application.
Plaid focuses on enabling consumers and businesses to interact with their bank accounts, check balances, and make payments through financial technology applications
The company has benefited from a steady growth of users since its debut at the TechCrunch hackathon five years ago. According to the firm, their software integrates with more than 10,000 banks and connects to roughly 20 million consumer accounts. Plaid said its customer base doubled from 2017 to 2018.
The founding duo plan to use funds from this latest round to build out its team in San Francisco, Salt Lake City and New York.
“When we think about our long-term goals, we want to make money easier for everyone,” Perret told TechCrunch. “We want everyone to lives these simple, straightforward digitally enabled financial lives and for us, that means supporting these tech innovators in the space and these large incumbents. We want to be able to help them create great consumer financial experiences so consumers can live simpler financial lives.”