Capital One Financial announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Brex in a stock-and-cash transaction valued at $5.15 billion, a move that would expand Capital One’s footprint in business payments and bring Brex’s AI-driven spend and payments platform under a major U.S. bank.
Founded in 2017, Brex is known as an AI-native finance platform that combines corporate cards, expense management, and payments capabilities, with automation features designed to reduce manual review and improve spending controls. Capital One said the acquisition would accelerate its strategy to build at the “frontier” of technology-driven payments, while Brex said the combination would pair its product and payments expertise with Capital One’s scale, underwriting capabilities, and brand.
Brex founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi is expected to continue leading the business following the close. And the companies expect the transaction to close in the middle of calendar year 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.
Support: BofA Securities served as Capital One’s financial advisor, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz served as its legal advisor, with Baker McKenzie advising on certain foreign legal matters. Centerview Partners served as Brex’s financial advisor, and Wilson Sonsini and Simpson Thacher served as Brex’s legal advisors.
KEY QUOTES:
“Since our founding, we set out to build a payments company at the frontier of the technology revolution. Acquiring Brex accelerates this journey, especially in the business payments marketplace.”
“Brex invented the integrated combination of corporate credit cards, spend management software and banking together in a single platform. They have taken the rarest of journeys for a fintech, building a vertically integrated platform from the bottom of the tech stack to the top.”
Richard D. Fairbank, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Capital One
“We started Brex in 2017 as a category creator – bringing together financial services and software into one AI-native platform. Now we get to supercharge our next chapter in partnership with the team at Capital One. Together, we’ll maximize founder mode by combining Brex’s payments expertise and spend management software with Capital One’s massive scale, sophisticated underwriting, and compelling brand to accelerate growth and increase the speed at which we can offer better finance solutions to the millions of businesses in the U.S. mainstream economy.”
Pedro Franceschi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Brex
