Plaid

Plaid Inc. was founded in May 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey, two former Bain consultants who met in New York. Initially building a consumer personal-finance app, they quickly discovered that banks did not expose transaction data in any standardized or developer-friendly way. Recognizing this infrastructure gap, they pivoted to build an API that would aggregate and normalize bank data for developers, turning that technical challenge into Plaid's founding mission. The company secured $2.8 million in seed funding to build its initial API.

Key milestones include raising $44 million in a Series B round led by Goldman Sachs in 2016, closing $250 million in Series C funding at a $2.65 billion valuation in 2018, and acquiring Quovo in 2019 to expand into investment account and brokerage data services. In 2020, Visa announced a $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid, but the U.S. Department of Justice blocked the deal on antitrust grounds, and it was terminated in January 2021. Following the terminated deal, Plaid raised $425 million in Series D funding at a $13.4 billion valuation in 2021, demonstrating strong investor confidence.

As of March 2024, Plaid serves over 100 million users and connects more than 8,000 apps and services with over 12,000 financial institutions across 17 countries. According to the company, one in three adults in the U.S. have used Plaid to connect their account to a fintech application. The company's product suite includes Transactions, Auth, Balance, Identity, Assets, Investments, Liabilities, Payment Initiation, Income, Monitor, and Transfer. Plaid also offers embedded finance features through Transfer, which allows companies to add bank payment systems directly into their services. [edit]