Data network Plaid has raised $575 million in a fundraise led by Franklin Templeton, alongside Fidelity Management and Research.
Other participants included existing Plaid investors NEA and Ribbit Capital.
The business will use the proceeds to “address employee tax withholding obligations related to the conversion of expiring RSUs to shares, and to offer some liquidity to our current team”.
Plaid’s co-founder and chief executive officer Zach Perret
Zach Perret, co-founder and chief executive officer of Plaid, said: “We are excited for the years ahead. Plaid has evolved from a business solely focused on bank linking, into a suite of data analytics products that are essential to financial services and adjacent markets.
“Whether it’s signing up new users, fighting fraud, enabling bank payments, or making underwriting decisions, our network is core to the way that our customers run their businesses and consumers run their financial lives.”
Plaid made the announcement at the same time as publishing its first annual letter to shareholders, in which Perret revealed that more than one in two Americans with a bank account have used Plaid.
He called 2024 “a seminal year”, pointing to its expanded product suite across alternative credit data, anti-fraud and bank payments solutions which have seen “record adoption” in the US, Canada, UK and Europe.
Perret wrote: “Retail financial services is at a pivotal moment. A small handful of industry giants have emerged with a vast technological and data advantage that they are using to accumulate market share by using data to intelligently target customers more effectively, cross-sell products, make better lending decisions, and improve their risk and underwriting models.”
He added: “The impact is that these large players add more new customers, accumulate more deposits, make more and better loans, and experience less fraud.
“The companies that will grow fastest in the next decade will be those who can best use data to their and their end users’ advantage.”
Further reading: Dwolla makes integration with Plaid available to enterprise customers
Plaid is a Platinum Partner of Open Banking Expo USA 2025, which takes place in New York on June 26. Click here to find out more about partnering, exhibiting and to register to attend.
