Fintech startups in San Francisco

Max Levchin

Founded 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin; buy-now-pay-later installment lending integrated at checkout with major merchants (Amazon, Shopify, Apple Pay). Public on Nasdaq (AFRM) since 2021. As of 2025 r...

Jack Dorsey & Jim McKelvey

Founded 2009 as Square; HQ in Oakland. Operates Square merchant payments, Cash App (57M+ active users) and TIDAL, with a deep Bitcoin strategy — held ~8,997 BTC corporate treasury (Mar 2026) and rolled out m...

Chris Britt & Ryan King

Founded 2012 in SF; consumer neobank offering fee-free banking, early direct deposit and credit-builder products aimed at everyday and underserved Americans. IPO'd on Nasdaq (CHYM) June 12, 2025, raising ~$8...

Jason Gardner

Founded 2009; pioneered the modern open-API card-issuing and payment-processing platform used by fintechs and enterprises. Public on Nasdaq (MQ) since June 2021. Founder Jason Gardner stepped back from CEO i...

Vlad Tenev & Baiju Bhatt (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013 in Menlo Park; commission-free trading of stocks, options, ETFs and crypto. Public (Nasdaq: HOOD) since 2021; joined the S&P 500 in September 2025 with a market cap around $98B mid-2025. Crypto ...

Ryan Breslow & Eric Feldman

Founded 2014; one-click checkout and shopper-network platform for online retailers. Peaked at an $11B valuation (2021), crashed to ~$300M (2024); founder Ryan Breslow returned as CEO and in 2026 was raising ...

Henrique Dubugras & Pedro Franceschi

Founded 2017 by Brazilian founders; corporate cards, spend management and business banking for startups and enterprises. Peaked at a $12.3B valuation (2022); became operating-cash-flow positive in 2025. In A...

Immad Akhund (Indian/Pakistani-origin founder)

Founded 2017; digital banking for startups and SMBs, serving 300,000+ companies. Raised a $300M Series C at $3.5B (March 2025), then $200M Series D at a $5.2B valuation (2026, +49% in 14 months, led by TCV)....

Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar & Jeff Arnold

Founded 2017; tech-enabled bookkeeping, tax and CFO services for startups and SMBs. Backed by Sequoia, Index and Bezos Expeditions; hit a $1.2B valuation in 2021. Serves thousands of venture-backed companies.

Zach Perret & William Hockey

Founded 2013; the connective 'plumbing' of fintech — APIs linking consumer bank accounts to apps, plus identity, anti-fraud, credit and payments. Peaked at $13.4B (2021); a 2026 tender offer set the valuatio...

Patrick & John Collison

Founded 2010; developer-first payments infrastructure, the most valuable private fintech/infra company in the US (~$90B+ tuck-in tender valuations 2024–2025). A defining API-infrastructure company: 'seven li...

William Hockey & Annie Hockey

Founded 2019 by Plaid co-founder William Hockey; a nationally chartered 'developer infrastructure bank' offering deposits, ACH/wire, real-time payments and lending directly to fintechs — no middleware. Notab...

Soups Ranjan (Indian-origin founder)

AI risk platform for fraud prevention, compliance (AML/KYC) and credit underwriting using device intelligence and behavioral biometrics. Raised a $70M Series C in Feb 2025 (led by Activant; a16z, GV, Experia...

active cyber insurance

Founded by Joshua Motta and John Hering. Combines cyber insurance with proactive security monitoring and incident response, bundling coverage with digital-risk management for businesses. Has raised roughly $...

global HR, payroll & EOR platform

Founded 2019 in San Francisco by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang. Global payroll, contractor management and employer-of-record platform serving 100+ countries. Raised ~$979M total; valued at $12B (Feb 2025). Nota...

agentic AI for audit & advisory firms

SF-based vertical-AI platform (YC) delivering end-to-end agentic workflows for audit, assurance and advisory firms to raise margins and win business. Has raised ~$122M. A leading example of AI reshaping the ...

payroll, benefits & HR for SMBs

Founded 2011 in San Francisco by Josh Reeves, Tomer London and Edward Kim. Payroll, benefits and HR platform for small and mid-sized businesses. Raised ~$746M total; last valued around $9.5B, with steady exp...

usage-based billing infrastructure

Founded 2019 in San Francisco by Scott Woody and Kevin Liu. Real-time usage-based billing and metering infrastructure powering AI and SaaS companies (OpenAI, Anthropic among reported users). A key Bay Area f...

technology-enabled insurance brokerage

Founded by Spike Lipkin and Gordon Wintrob. A software-driven commercial insurance brokerage and benefits platform. Raised ~$300M total ($200M Series D, 2022); acquired by WTW (Willis Towers Watson) for ~$90...

identity verification infrastructure

Founded 2018 in San Francisco. Configurable identity-verification and fraud/KYC infrastructure now positioning as the 'verified identity layer' for an agentic-AI world. Raised a $200M Series D in 2025 (led b...

workforce management (HR + IT + finance)

Founded 2016 in San Francisco by Parker Conrad and Prasanna Sankar. Unifies HR, IT and finance (payroll, devices, apps, spend) on one employee-data platform. Raised a $450M Series G in May 2025 at a $16.8B v...