Plaid

Plaid builds the data connections that let financial apps link to a consumer's bank account, verify balances and move money. Apps such as Venmo and Chime rely on it. The company was founded in May 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey and is headquartered in San Francisco. Plaid says more than 9,000 fintech applications are built on its platform and that it supports over 12,000 financial institutions, with more than 900 employees and operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and several European countries.

Plaid's financing history runs through six disclosed rounds. Spark Capital led a $2.8 million seed round in September 2013. New Enterprise Associates led a $12.5 million Series A in November 2014, and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners led a $44 million Series B in June 2016. In December 2018 Plaid announced a $250 million Series C at a $2.65 billion valuation, led by Mary Meeker, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Altimeter Capital led a $425 million Series D in April 2021 at a $13.4 billion valuation. In April 2025 Plaid raised $575 million at a $6.1 billion valuation in a round led by Franklin Templeton, Fidelity and BlackRock, with existing backers NEA and Ribbit Capital. Together these rounds total about $1.3 billion. In January 2019 Plaid acquired its competitor Quovo for $200 million.

On January 13, 2020, Visa announced it would acquire Plaid for $5.3 billion in cash and debt. The United States Department of Justice sued to block the deal on antitrust grounds, and Visa abandoned it in January 2021. Plaid stayed independent. Revenue was about $170 million in 2020. In 2021 the company settled a $58 million class action over claims that it shared consumer banking data without consent. In February 2026 Plaid completed an employee share sale at an $8 billion valuation, 31% above the April 2025 price.

Plaid is a case study in a private valuation that rose, fell and partly recovered. Seed and Series A investors such as Spark Capital and NEA entered at small check sizes in 2013 and 2014, and the abandoned Visa deal would have returned capital about seven years after founding. Investors in the 2021 Series D at $13.4 billion were marked well below cost by the 2025 round at $6.1 billion, while the 2025 investors saw a markup within a year. More than twelve years after founding, liquidity for early holders has come through secondary and employee share sales rather than an IPO or sale.