Zach Perret, CEO and co-founder of Plaid, speaks during the Silicon Slopes Tech summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, on January 31, 2020.
George Frey | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Plaid raised a new round of capital that nearly tripled its valuation a few months after a deal Visa bought was undone.
The fintech company announced on Wednesday a $ 425 million D-Series financing round, led by Altimeter Capital with the participation of new investors, Silver Lake and Ribbit Capital. Former investors Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and New Enterprise Associates also joined the round.
The new funding increases Plaid’s valuation to $ 13.4 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details were private. The report first reported that Plaid was in the process of raising money.
Earlier last year, Visa agreed to buy Plaid for $ 5.3 billion, which at the time was double the previous valuation of the San Francisco-based start-up. The Justice Department later sued to block the deal, alleging it would limit competition in the payments industry. A few months later, Visa dismissed its acquisition efforts. The companies said the decision to end the merger was mutual.
Plaid technology links the bank account to fintech technology applications such as Venmo, Robinhood and Coinbase, which have experienced strong growth during the pandemic. Plaid also added Google and Microsoft as customers last year and said its customer base grew 60% in 2020 amid rising digital finances.
CEO Zach Perret said the latest cash injection would help Plaid increase the number of jobs, which already grew 40% last year, and keep pace with demand. He pointed to new digital adopters as their parents, whose 70-year-old peers recommend online funding apps to manage spending.
“Our market is experiencing a maritime shift, with consumers who we never thought would accept digital finance and participate to a large extent,” Perret told CNBC in a telephone interview.
Plaid has attracted a star list of Silicon Valley and Wall Street investors, including investments from Visa, Citi, Google and Goldman Sachs. Mary Meeker, the former technology investment banker who has spent the past decade on venture capital, was an early investor and is part of the company’s start-up board.
“A new era of funding is underway and Plaid is well positioned to help develop large-scale digital ecosystems that offer the kinds of tools and services consumers want,” Meeker told CNBC via email .
As for plans to make Plaid public, Perret said “nothing is on the horizon in the short term.” “But in the long run, that’s definitely the direction we’d like to go,” he said.