THE FINTECH 50

OUR NINTH ANNUAL FINTECH 50 FEATURES FIRMS THAT CONTINUE TO INNOVATE EVEN AS THE INDUSTRY SUFFERS LAYOFFS, LOWER VALUATIONS AND A VENTURE CAPITAL DROUGHT. THE 13 FIRST-TIMERS ON THE LIST ARE PROFILED BELOW. ALL OUR PICKS ARE PRIVATE COMPANIES AND HAVE HEADQUARTERS OR CUSTOMERS IN THE U.S. FOR MORE DETAILS, PLEASE VISIT FORBES.COM/FINTECH50.

ADDEPAR

LOCATION: MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA • CATEGORY: WALL STREET

AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: ERIC POIRIER, 41

ALLOY

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: WALL STREET AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: TOMMY NICHOLAS, 35

ARTA FINANCE

LOCATION: MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA • CATEGORY: INVESTING CEO: CAESAR SENGUPTA, 48

Nearing his 15th year at Alphabet, where he worked alongside CEO Sundar Pichai on ChromeOS and led the development of Google Pay, Sengupta had a high net worth, but not high enough to start a family office to help him manage his money. He and a few other executives left the tech giant in 2021 to found

Arta, a digital family office that provides the garden-variety wealthy access to alternative investments and financial strategies typically available only to the ultrawealthy.

The two-year-old firm has raised $92 million from investors including Pichai, Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), Ribbit Capital, Coatue, banking pioneer Betsy Cohen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. In October, Arta opened to accredited investors in the U.S. and reached $100 million in assets under management. It plans to launch soon in Singapore.

AT-BAY (See “Insurance Hackers,” page 74.)

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: INSURANCE CEO: ROTEM IRAM, 43

ATOMIC INVEST

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: INVESTING CEO: DAVID DINDI, 31

CANDEX

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: JEREMY LAPPIN, 46

Candex’s software processes invoices and payments, eliminating the need for clients such as Dell, Danone and L’Oréal to onboard

each supplier individually. Vendors in 45 countries can be paid within minutes.

CAPITALIZE

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: INVESTING CEO: GAURAV SHARMA, 39

Capitalize helps users find old 401(k) accounts and consolidate them into a new IRA at one of its institutional partners, which include Betterment, Robinhood, Schwab and SoFi.

CARRY1ST

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: CORDEL ROBBIN-COKER, 37

When he was 5, Robbin-Coker’s family fled war-torn Sierra Leone and settled in the U.S., where he got a top-flight education, first at the Milton Hershey School (an elite boarding school for low-income kids), then at Stanford. There, he majored in political science and resolved to make an impact on Africa. That translated into spending the last half of his decade in investment banking helping create and deploy a $700 million Africa fund for the Carlyle Group. In 2018, RobbinCoker and two cofounders started Carry1st to develop mobile games for Africa. That’s still a goal, but the trio also moved into the quicker-to-payoff business of helping established video game franchises, including Call of Duty, accept payments across Africa. The startup has secured $60 million in venture funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Google and

Riot Games; last year it brought in $25 million in revenue.

CHAINALYSIS

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCIES • CEO: MICHAEL GRONAGER, 53

CHIME

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: PERSONAL FINANCE CEO: CHRIS BRITT, 50

COALITION (See “Insurance Hackers,” page 74.)

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: INSURANCE CEO: JOSHUA MOTTA, 40

COLUMN

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS

BANKING • CEO: WILLIAM HOCKEY, 34

DATASNIPPER

LOCATION: AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS CATEGORY: WALL STREET AND ENTERPRISE CEO: VIDYA PETERS, 43

Former Marqeta chief operating officer Peters was recruited last year to run DataSnipper, which uses AI to make auditing and accounting more efficient. Its technology “snips” numbers from loose reams of receipts, bank statements or handwritten notes and matches them with records of expenses, checking to ensure the numbers add up. “That work is absolutely mind-numbing,” Peters says. “We’re not displacing

Lockbit, Medusa and Alphv began piling on. So far, Citrix Bleed has been blamed for breaches at companies including Boeing, Toyota Financial Services and ICBC, China’s massive state-owned bank. In December, Comcast’s Xfinity internet service notified 36 million customers that their user names, birthdates, security questions and parts of their Social Security numbers may have been exposed. But just five businesses have filed Citrix Bleed claims with At-Bay, and it expects total losses will be less than $2 million.

“Everything is bad in our world, but this is medium to low risk,” Iram concludes—particularly when compared with a vulnerability in Microsoft’s physical email servers, which affected 10% of At-Bay’s customers in 2022 and led to more than $10 million in losses.

Iram has had a lot to put in perspective since Hamas terrorists’ October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. “Everything has been incredibly traumatic for us,” he says. A fifth of his 110 Israeli employees have been mobilized to fight, forcing some lower-priority projects to be shelved as other workers scramble to pick up the slack.

The CEO began his own mandatory military service at 18 and was assigned to the Israeli Intelligence Corp.’s 8200 unit, famed for producing cybersecurity stars including billionaire entrepreneurs Gil Shwed, the CEO and cofounder of Check Point Software, and Assaf Rappaport, the CEO and cofounder of Wiz, a cloud security outfit. Iram stayed in the unit for five years, ending up a captain, with 300 people reporting to him. Then it was on to Hebrew University of Jerusalem for a computer engineering degree, jobs in software engineering and as a McKinsey consultant, a Harvard MBA and a stint running the cybersecurity practice of New York–based global risk advisory firm K2 Intelligence (now K2 Integrity).

In 2016, he left K2 and started working on his startup with three cofounders and a little backing from HSB, a tech-focused unit of Munich Re. At-Bay formally launched in 2017 with seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others. When a 2020 surge in ransomware attacks led many established carriers to lower their coverage limits and increase prices, At-Bay hit the gas. “Everybody else ran away,” Iram says. Gross premiums sextupled from $20 million in 2020 to $120 million in 2021. So far, At-Bay’s tech-first approach has helped it hold down losses; its incurred loss ratio for 2022 (the most recent year with meaningful data, given that claims take months to realize) was 29%, compared with a 45% average for the top 20 U.S.-domiciled cyber insurers.

These days, At-Bay is increasingly focused on creating security software to bundle with its insurance. A vulnerability monitoring tool comes standard with its policies. It recently added a managed detection-and-response product that starts at about $5,000 a year and hooks up to clients’ internal systems, including Microsoft 365, to better assess risk—for example, it lets At-Bay see if a company’s employees use multifactor authentication to log in.

While keen to expand his security software offerings, Iram has resisted the temptation to broaden At-Bay’s insurance products—an allure to which Motta has yielded. So far, At-Bay has raised $292 million in investor money, getting a $1.4 billion valuation at its last fundraise in mid-2021. It says it still has nearly $200 million in the bank.

“If you use a computer and an internet connection, congratulations, you have cyber risk,” says Motta, whose customers range from doctors’ offices to NFL teams, hot sauce manufacturers and cryptocurrency startups. He’s sitting in his home office in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, with a view of the ocean. No fewer than six signs outside his fence announce 24/7 monitoring and security. “It’s like Fort Knox,” he says. Self-protection is a necessary fact of life in this line of work. When someone takes a job at either Coalition or At-Bay and announces it on LinkedIn, they are typically bombarded with phishing texts purporting to be from their new CEO.

Motta grew up in a Kansas City suburb and got hooked on the internet early by two uncles who worked in networking technology. By 12, he was building websites for local realtors. By 15, he had a $15-an-hour summer programming job at Microsoft, which was impressed by the shopping cart software he’d created for DogToys.com and others. While majoring in international studies at the University of Chicago, he got a part-time analyst gig at the CIA, where he studied hacking campaigns by America’s adversaries. After graduation, he tried investment banking at Goldman Sachs in London, did short stints in private equity and venture capital and then, in 2011, became the 20th employee of Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure security company.

In 2016, he cofounded Redacted with Max Kelly, Facebook’s former chief security officer, and John Hering, the founder of security company Lookout. But while Kelly wanted to build security tech for big companies, Motta was focused on insurance. So Hering and Motta spun an existing software product—we’re displacing all of the evenings and weekends that [accountants spent] doing this manually.’’ Earlier in her career, Peters spent seven years at Intuit, primarily marketing QuickBooks, after earning her MBA at Northwestern. DataSnipper now counts 1,400 accounting firms, including Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC, as clients. Revenue grew 150% last year, finishing at a run rate of $45 million. In January, it raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation.

ESUSU

LOCATIONS: NEW YORK CITY AND LOS ANGELES CATEGORY: PERSONAL FINANCE • CO-CEOS: WEMIMO ABBEY, 31; SAMIR GOEL, 29

ETHOS

LOCATION: AUSTIN, TX • CATEGORY: INSURANCE CEO: PETER COLIS, 34

FIREBLOCKS

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCIES • CEO: MICHAEL SHAULOV, 41

FOUND

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS BANKING CEO: LAUREN MYRICK, 39

After starting out as an accountant, Myrick spent eight years at Square, five of them managing its payroll product. Seeing a growing army of self-employed people and owner-operators struggle with invoices, bookkeeping and taxes, in 2020 she launched Found, which she describes as “almost like a business bank account with QuickBooks or a bookkeeping software built in.” Customers can use her software to create invoices, manage contractors and track projects. Found has more than 120,000 active customers, ranging from restaurant owners and Etsy sellers to gig workers and independent business consultants. It has raised $73 million (most recently in 2022 at a $350 million valuation) from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

GAUNTLET

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCIES • CEO: TARUN CHITRA, 34

Gauntlet aims to help blockchain-based decentralized finance projects—which blow up with distressing regularity—analyze and monitor risk.

GLOSSGENIUS

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: DANIELLE COHEN-SHOHET, 33

GOODLEAP

LOCATION: ROSEVILLE, CA • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS

BANKING • CEO: HAYES BARNARD, 51

GROUNDFLOOR FINANCE

LOCATION: ATLANTA • CATEGORY: REAL ESTATE CEO: BRIAN DALLY, 52

Packages loans to residential real estate developers and then

allows ordinary folks with as little as $100 to invest to buy into the projects online. Presented as an alternative to real estate investment trusts or property-focused mutual funds.

ICAPITAL

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: INVESTING CEO: LAWRENCE CALCANO, 61

KIN INSURANCE

LOCATION: CHICAGO • CATEGORY: INSURANCE CEO: SEAN HARPER, 43

KUDOS TECHNOLOGIES

LOCATION: LOS ANGELES CATEGORY: PERSONAL FINANCE CEO: TIKUE ANAZODO, 32

After Nigeria-born Anazodo moved to the U.S. in 2009 to attend Columbia University, the computer science student found applying for his first credit card complicated. He now has 11 cards, creating a different sort of complexity. In 2022, after stints working at Microsoft, Google and Affirm, he launched Kudos, a browser-based smart assistant that helps shoppers pick the best rewards card in their wallet for each online purchase. The app also offers special rewards from thousands of participating merchants (including Walmart, Priceline and Lowe’s), all of which pay a commission to Kudos. The startup, which has raised $17 million, also makes money recommending new cards to its 150,000 registered users.

LEAD BANK

LOCATION: KANSAS CITY, MO • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TOBUSINESS BANKING • CEO: JACQUELINE RESES, 54

MELIO

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: MATAN BAR, 39

MERCURY

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS

BANKING • CEO: IMMAD AKHUND, 39

MERGE

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: WALL STREET

AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: SHENSI DING, 31

Ding, who started coding at age 12 and has a computer science degree from Columbia, did the customary stint in investment banking before taking a chief of staff job at a cybersecurity startup. In 2020, she cofounded Merge, which sells a platform that helps companies integrate their cloudbased accounting, payroll, budget, tax and human resources systems. She has raised $75 million, most recently at a $325 million valuation. Ding likens the concept to a one-stop shop for takeout that allows you to order Chinese, Indian or Italian without having to deal with each restaurant’s quirky website. Merge’s 300 customers include ByteDance,

Korn Ferry and Ramp. out Coalition into its own company; investors including Vy Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Valor backed them with $10 million in funding. Coalition announced its birth on December 5, 2017, three weeks after At-Bay’s launch.

From day one, Motta positioned Coalition to grow faster than At-Bay. Both companies had great tech, low prices and fast underwriting. Motta added a critical human ingredient: He hired insurance industry veterans who had existing relationships with the independent brokers who sell most business insurance. That helped it capitalize more quickly on the 2020 surge in demand.

Motta was also more aggressive about tapping into the venture funding that flooded into fintech during the pandemic—by mid-2022, Coalition had raised $770 million. But this large pot also enabled a big mistake. Flush with VC cash, in 2021 Coalition paid $200 million to acquire Attune, a New York–based insurer and digital marketplace serving 15,000 brokers selling smallbusiness policies of all sorts, from professional liability and workers’ compensation to flood insurance. Attune’s insurance book was already losing money, and after Hurricane Ian hit Florida in September 2022, its finances got worse. After just 15 months, Motta sold Attune. Coalition won’t say how much it sold for, but according to a source familiar with the deal, it was at a steep loss. Motta, in his defense, points out that as part of the sale, Coalition secured the rights to become the exclusive seller of cyber insurance on Attune’s platform, which he now insists was his primary goal in the first place.

Coalition has also expanded laterally into another insurance niche: liability coverage for directors and officers. “The idea is to become the dominant insurance provider for a digital business,” Motta says, adding that offering multiple products also makes Coalition more attractive to brokers.

There’s a bigger systemic challenge facing both Coalition and At-Bay. Despite the rapid growth of cyber insurance over the past few years, some industry insiders question its sustainability. They fear hacking schemes are changing too rapidly to reliably assess risk and most customers are still unprepared, raising the specter of a catastrophic event causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.

Of course, if old-line insurers have an awful year in cyber, other parts of their business could provide a cushion. The startups don’t have that luxury. “There’s a real thing called having scars from losing money. And I admit I do not have a lot of these scars,” Iram says. “I try to surround myself with people who have developed those scars, because there’s an intuition and a perspective that you develop when you’ve done this for 25, 30 years.”

MIDDESK

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: WALL STREET

AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: KYLE MACK, 33

A plethora of startups help financial institutions comply with know-yourcustomer regulations and detect if individuals are fraudsters, but few aim to do the same vetting for businesses. During his four years at Checkr, which runs background checks on job candidates, Mack noticed that gap and in

2018 launched Middesk through YCombinator. Using data from primary sources like secretary of state offices in all 50 states, Middesk helps its customers verify that businesses trying to open accounts, take out loans or get onboarded as vendors are legit. Its 600 customers include traditional national and regional banks, plus business banking fintechs like Mercury. Middesk clients ran 2.5 million checks last year, up from 1 million in 2022, with Middesk receiving a small fee for each one. It has raised $80 million from investors including Sequoia and Insight Partners and was valued at $760 million in 2022.

MX

LOCATION: LEHI, UT • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: JIM MAGATS, 53

NAVAN

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CA • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS

BANKING • CEO: ARIEL COHEN, 48

NEXT INSURANCE

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CA • CATEGORY: INSURANCE CEO: GUY GOLDSTEIN, 56

NIUM

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: PRAJIT NANU, 42

PERSONA

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: WALL STREET

AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: RICK SONG, 33

PLAID

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: ZACHARY PERRET, 36

PROPEL

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: PERSONAL FINANCE CEO: JIMMY CHEN, 36

PULLEY

LOCATION: OAKLAND, CA • CATEGORY: WALL STREET AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: YIN WU, 35

Cap tables can be complicated. Pulley’s robust fundraising model tells founders exactly how much their stakes will be diluted in complex early-stage rounds, and an offer letter tool automatically updates the cap table when a new employee accepts and is offered equity. Pulley benefited when the category leader, Carta, suffered blowback for sharing sensitive information about startups’ cap tables with secondary

market investors. The startup, which was cofounded in 2019 by Wu, a Stanford computer science grad, has 4,200 companies using its software, nearly double its customer count of a year ago. That’s a long way from Carta’s 40,000, but Wu is capitalizing on Carta’s woes by offering to cover the remaining cost of defectors’ contracts if they switched to Pulley by the end of January. Plans start at $1,200 per year for companies with up to 25 stakeholders. So far, it has raised $50 million from Founders Fund and Stripe, among others, and was valued at $250 million in 2022.

RAMP

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS

BANKING • CEO: ERIC GLYMAN, 33

SENTILINK

LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO • CATEGORY: WALL STREET AND ENTERPRISE • CEO: NAFTALI HARRIS, 31

STRIPE

LOCATIONS: SAN FRANCISCO AND DUBLIN • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: PATRICK COLLISON, 35

SUNBIT

LOCATION: LOS ANGELES CATEGORY: PERSONAL FINANCE CEO: ARAD LEVERTOV, 46

Provides financing for large, unexpected expenses incurred at thousands of small businesses like dental offices and auto repair shops. Sunbit had more than 2 million loan customers last year.

SURE

LOCATION: SANTA MONICA, CA • CATEGORY: INSURANCE CEO: WAYNE SLAVIN, 40

TABAPAY

LOCATION: MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA • CATEGORY: PAYMENTS CEO: RODNEY ROBINSON, 60

TALA

LOCATION: SANTA MONICA, CA • CATEGORY: PERSONAL FINANCE CEO: SHIVANI SIROYA, 41

TRUMID

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: WALL STREET AND ENTERPRISE • CO-CEOS: RONNIE MATEO, 50; MIKE SOBEL, 44

UNIT

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS BANKING • CEO: ITAI DAMTI, 38

VALON

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: REAL ESTATE CEO: ANDREW WANG, 31

VESTWELL

LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY • CATEGORY: INVESTING CEO: AARON SCHUMM, 46

WEALTHFRONT

LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CA • CATEGORY: INVESTING CEO: DAVID FORTUNATO, 38

ZEST AI

LOCATION: BURBANK, CA • CATEGORY: BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS

BANKING • CEO: MIKE DE VERE, 50