San Francisco-based Plaid has announced that it has raised $250 million in Series C funding led by Mary Meeker via Kleiner Perkins’ growth fund. This funding round gives Plaid a $2.65 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch’s sources. In conjunction with this funding round, Meeker is joining Plaid’s board of directors.
New investors that participated in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Coatue Management. Existing investors Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates and Spark Capital joined as well. Plaid has raised a total of $310 million thus far.
What does Plaid do? Plaid provides infrastructure for companies that allow consumers to interact with bank accounts on the web through third-party applications such as Robinhood, Venmo, Coinbase, Acorns, and LendingClub.
Currently, Plaid is integrated with more than 10,000 banks in the U.S. and Canada. And 25% of people living in those countries with bank accounts have linked with Plaid through at ones one of the apps that utilize its APIs, up from 13% last year. This makes it easier for financial companies to build applications without having to set up a team of engineers to build tools that connect to user bank accounts.
Plaid was founded by former Bain consultants William Hockey (CTO) and Zach Perret (CEO). And Plaid’s customer base more than doubled this year. When Plaid raised $44 million in Series B funding in 2016, the company was valued at $225 million so the company’s valuation jumped more than tenfold.
“We’re planning to grow the team and expand our operations. We’re focused on shipping and scaling products that will both serve the growth and scale of these customers, and become the foundation for fintech for decades to come,” said the founders of the company in a statement. “The coming years will continue to bring major changes to the financial ecosystem. As digitization simplifies financial products, banking services are becoming increasingly self-contained and embeddable. Instead of visiting a bank branch to get a loan, consumers can now apply for a mortgage via their phone as they search for a home. Indeed, many companies—for example, those in the sharing economy—consider embedded banking products to be a key differentiator for their hosts, drivers, sellers, and suppliers. Every company is becoming a fintech company.”
