Plaid’s Valuation Soars to $8B as Momentum Returns

Hey FinTech Fanatic!

Plaid just raised fresh capital at an $8 billion valuation.

The round was structured to give employees liquidity. Not expansion capital. A secondary that reflects where private FinTech markets stand in 2026.

Quick rewind...

Visa tried to acquire Plaid for $5.3B in 2020. The DOJ blocked it.
In 2021, Plaid reportedly hit $13B.

Last April, Plaid raised $575 million to fuel its expanding product ecosystem. CEO Zach Perrett highlighted the company’s evolution, stating that Plaid has shifted from simple bank connectivity to offering an essential suite of data analytics tools for the broader financial market.

Now it’s back at $8B. Lower than the peak. Higher than the failed acquisition.

But not all capital is created equal 👇

While Plaid remains core infrastructure in the US financial stack, things look murkier across the Atlantic...

New DOJ documents reveal Jeffrey Epstein invested more than $2.5M in N26 via funds managed by Valar Ventures during early rounds in 2015–2016.

At the time, N26 was still an early-stage challenger bank. Today, it has raised nearly $1.8B.

But the most striking part of this story is the response from N26 co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal: “With an American fund, you can normally assume that the money is clean. If we had known that the money came from a convicted criminal, we would not have accepted it.”

Internal emails reveal that Andrew McCormack, a partner at Valar Ventures, offered Jeffrey Epstein another opportunity to invest in N26 in November 2018, as part of a major funding round where Valar planned to invest around $30 million.

Watching how capital shapes FinTech’s next cycle? Scroll down 👇 I’ll be back on Monday with more.

Cheers,

Marcel

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M&A

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