Plaid is a financial technology company based in San Francisco. The company builds a technology platform, which enables applications to connect with users’ bank accounts. Plaid focuses on enabling consumers and businesses to interact with their bank accounts, check balances, and make payments through financial technology applications.
Plaid was founded by Zach Perret and William Hockey in 2013. Plaid was originally intended to be a personal financial management and tracking tool for consumers, previously operating under the name "Sliver" and then "Rambler". When confronted with difficulties in connecting bank accounts required for these tools, Plaid pivoted its core business focus to a unified banking API.
Plaid has raised a total of $309.3 million. The company raised $59.3 million in Seed, Series A and Series B funding from Spark Capital, Google Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Goldman Sachs, American Express, and Citibank. On Dec. 11, 2018 they announced a $250 million Series C round with a valuation of $2.7 billion. The funding round was led by Kleiner Perkins' partner Mary Meeker, with Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures also joining as new investors. Former backers Goldman Sachs, NEA and Spark Capital also participated.
They are the company of the week this week after revving up their global expansion, which should enable the popular apps they power to do the same.
After launching in Canada last year, the venture-capital-backed company announced its U.K. launch on Wednesday!