Finance · Profile from Finance Research Companion
Plaid Inc.
The leading US consumer-permissioned financial-data network, a private San Francisco company that sits between apps and banks. When a person links a bank account to Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, Chime, a lender or a budgeting app, Plaid often makes the connection: it confirms the account, reads balances and transactions with the user's consent, and helps move money by ACH. Founded in 2012–13 by Zach Perret and William Hockey, Plaid began by "screen-scraping" bank websites with customers' passwords and then moved most traffic to token-based bank APIs. Visa agreed to buy it for $5.3bn in January 2020; the Justice Department sued to block the deal and it was abandoned in January 2021. Plaid then raised at ~$13.4bn (April 2021), cut ~20% of staff (December 2022), raised $575m at ~$6.1bn (April 2025) and sold employee shares at ~$8bn (February 2026). It settled a consumer privacy class action for $58m (final approval July 2022), agreed in September 2025 to pay JPMorgan Chase for data access, and is the company with most at stake in the CFPB's unfinished Section 1033 open-banking rule.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2012–13 in San Francisco by Zach Perret and William Hockey (company histories give 2012 for the partnership and 2013 for the launch of the API; reported)
- Founders
- Zach Perret (CEO; previously a consultant at Bain, reported) and William Hockey (previously at Bain, reported; left Plaid in 2019 and co-founded Column, a chartered bank, reported)
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California; offices in New York, Salt Lake City, London, Amsterdam and elsewhere (reported)
- Ownership / structure
- Private, venture-backed. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, Ribbit Capital, Silver Lake, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Citi Ventures, American Express Ventures and Visa and Mastercard (reported). Not a bank; Plaid's consumer-reporting subsidiary, Plaid Check, is a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA (company)
- Leadership
- Zach Perret (co-founder, CEO); Eric Sager (COO, reported); CFO and other executives (verify current titles)
- Segment and customers
- Fintech / data and payments infrastructure. Customers are developers and financial companies: fintech apps, brokerages and crypto exchanges, lenders, banks, payroll and wealth firms, and, from 2024–25, AI companies (company)
- Scale
- ~12,000 connected financial institutions in the US, Canada and Europe (company, verify); "one in two US adults" have connected an account through Plaid (company claim, verify); more than 8,000 customers (company, reported, verify)
- Financials
- Private; no audited figures published. 2024 revenue ~$380–390m (analyst estimates, reported via CNBC and Sacra); company said ARR passed $500m in Q4 2025 with revenue up nearly 40% and full-year adjusted EBITDA profitability (company, reported, verify); Sacra estimates ~$546m ARR
- Valuation
- ~$2.65bn (Series C, December 2018); $5.3bn (Visa offer, January 2020); ~$13.4bn (Series D, April 2021); ~$6.1bn ($575m round, April 2025); ~$8bn (employee tender, February 2026) (reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the bank-connection API (2013); the Venmo–Coinbase developer flywheel and Series C (2016–18); the move from screen-scraping to bank APIs (2018–21); Visa acquisition blocked (2020–21); Series D at $13.4bn (2021); $58m privacy class settlement (2021–22); layoffs and product broadening (2022–24); Section 1033 rule and reversal (2024–26); JPMorgan data-access fees (2025); down round and recovery (2025–26)
10 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2013
Founding and the Bank Connection API
Founding / launch
2018
Developer Flywheel and Series C
Funding round / acquisition (Quovo, January 2019)
2018
From Screen Scraping to Bank APIs
Partnership / pivot (in data-access method)
2020
Visa Acquisition Blocked
Acquisition (by Visa; abandoned after a government antitrust suit)
2021
Privacy Class Action Settlement 58m
Legal settlement (consumer class action)
2021
Series D at 13 4bn
Funding round
2022
Layoffs and the Shift to Multiple Products
Restructuring / launch (product broadening)
2024
Section 1033 Rule and Its Reversal
Regulatory (advocacy for, and exposure to, a federal open-banking rule)
2025
Down Round and 2026 Recovery to 8bn
Funding round (primary and secondary) / employee tender
2025
JPMorgan Data Access Fees
Pricing change (imposed by a counterparty) / partnership renewal