Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively.
Index Ventures led the financing, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), General Catalyst, SemperVirens, PeopleTech Partners, The General Partnership, and new investor ADP Ventures. In total since its October 2021 inception, Thatch has raised $84.5 million in equity funding.
While the San Francisco-based startup declined to reveal its new valuation, co-founder Adam Stevenson told TechCrunch that it was about three times higher than its Series A (Thatch raised $35 million in a Series A round led by General Catalyst in February of 2024).
Thatch helps employers offer Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA) to employees. ICHRA is a relatively new insurance option, in effect as of 2020.
So what’s the difference between an ICHRA and HRA? A typical HRA exclusively covers out of pocket medical expenses such as therapy, braces, and prescriptions.
The ICHRA allows employers to also use the funds to cover individual medical insurance.
“So imagine each employee gets $1,000 a month — one employee might buy a Kaiser HMO plan for $800 a month and spend the remaining $200 month on therapy, while another employee might spend $1,000 a month fully on a United PPO plan. Previously, HRAs could not pay for insurance,” CEO and co-founder Chris Ellis explained.
Thatch hosts a marketplace that allows employees to choose from different health insurance options, as well as offering a debit card that allows them to spend their remaining balance. Employees in turn use that budget through Thatch to choose healthcare plans they want, including medical, dental, and vision. If there are leftover funds, they can use that to pay for treatment costs. With Thatch, if an employee grows unhappy with one insurance carrier, they can switch, the founders said.
“We see about ~50% of members carry a balance left over of around $250 month on average,” Ellis told TechCrunch. Those employees then have the ability to use the extra balance to pay for things that health insurance doesn’t cover, he added.
In the founders’ view, since the regulation is relatively new, there is plenty of room for innovation. For example, ICHRA employee classes, Stevenson said, allow businesses to customize their health benefits by grouping employees based on factors like hours worked or geographical location. Such flexibility lets employers tailor health plan offerings to different classes.
“It makes no sense for healthcare to be dependent on your employer,” said Stevenson, who serves as the company’s president. “Rather than selecting one-size-fits-all benefits for their teams, ICHRA instead allows businesses to give their employees tax-free money to spend on healthcare in the way that works best for them.”
Thatch has partnered with QuickBooks so that the company “can embed and distribute ICHRA directly within” its own product, Ellis said. This means that companies that use QuickBooks can easily set up ICHRA accounts for employees. Thatch is in the process of building a similar offering for ADP, which hasn’t launched yet.
While Stevenson declined to reveal revenue figures, he said Thatch has onboarded “over a thousand companies” over the last 18 months and that revenue grew 8x year-over-year. (The company launched its offering in August of 2023). Customers include Dave’s Hot Chicken, Jersey Mike’s, PeopleTech Partners, Fragment.dev, Ferry Health, and Friends of Bonobos.
The two founders’ experience is primarily in healthcare. Ellis started his career as a cancer researcher at MIT. He then founded the U.S. sales team at Sophia Genetics, a clinical software startup, before working on the software product team at Agilent Technologies, a large testing equipment company.
Stevenson spent four years at health insurance giant Humana, while launching a few bootstrapped SaaS companies on the side. He eventually landed at Stripe, where he started and led different customer engineering teams for seven years.
The pair said they came to realize that making ICHRA work would ultimately be tied to solving fintech problems such as managing budgets, issuing funds, remitting and tracking payments, and handling adjudication. So the company worked to recruit employees from companies such as Stripe, Rippling, and Ramp to “to create all of the financial and operational infrastructure necessary to abstract away all of the messiness of ICHRA.”
Thatch also has recently hired Gary Daniels, the former CEO for UnitedHealthcare’s Pacific Northwest division, as its chief growth officer.
“He’s joining because he believes ICHRA is the future of employer-sponsored healthcare,” Stevenson told TechCrunch.
As of March, Thatch had 72 employees.
Jahanvi Sardana, partner at Index Ventures, likened the process of choosing a health plan to “trying to buy a house without knowing the price or details.”
“You’re handed a limited set of options and hope for the best,” she told TechCrunch “Thatch makes benefits work like a modern marketplace — transparent, personalized, and designed around choice. They’re not tweaking the system — they’re replacing it with something fundamentally better. It’s the kind of shift that, once it happens, will feel obvious in hindsight.”
Sardana believes that Thatch isn’t just tackling benefits — but also a technology and payments problem.
She said: “Every piece — plan selection, payments, reimbursements — is designed around the end user…That kind of shift doesn’t happen by accident…When the best companies in the world want your product before you even knock on their door, you know you’re building something game-changing.”
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Expanding into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a costly and complex challenge for global businesses, thanks to fragmented regulations and banking systems. Dubai-based fintech Fuse aims to simplify that with a cross-border payments API and has raised $6.6 million in seed funding to make it happen.
Founded in 2023 by George Davis, former co-founder of BVNK, and CTO James Smith, Fuse says it’s the first infrastructure-grade payments platform offering virtual International Bank Account Numbers (IBANs) in the region. This is a product Davis says is commonplace in Europe but nearly absent across MENA.
“We’re currently the only provider of virtual IBANs in the Middle East,” Davis told TechCrunch. “It’s a hyper-commoditized product in Europe, but here, it simply didn’t exist.”
Fuse’s core product includes USD virtual accounts for cross-border money movement and dirham-denominated IBANs for local UAE payments. That allows the startup to offer first-mile collections and last-mile payouts for international businesses without requiring them to set up a local entity, handle their own FX, or navigate licensing.
Davis outlines two legacy options for global companies trying to move money in MENA: local payment firms that lack scale, or larger cross-border players like Thunes, which often operate without local licenses and rely on patchy partnerships.
Fuse sits in the middle with a fully licensed, infrastructure-grade platform that simplifies money movement across the Middle East using virtual IBANs and local payout rails. With these options, global businesses can operate in the region without setting up local infrastructure or navigating regulatory red tape.
Most of Fuse’s clients are businesses in the U.S., Europe, and Asia that want to operate in MENA but lack the banking setup or licenses to do so quickly.
One use case is employers of record (EORs). For instance, a U.S.-based company with employees in the UAE typically needs a local bank account—something hard to obtain without residency or licensing—to pay salaries in dirhams under the correct business name. Fuse solves this by issuing USD-denominated virtual IBANs, allowing businesses to top them up and pay salaries locally in AED (dirhams) directly to named beneficiaries.
Customers can “create unlimited IBANs in their end customers’ names and make local payments,” said CEO George Davis. “Those customers don’t need to be residents or have local entities; they can be anywhere in the world.”
Fuse now serves over 20 clients, including EORs, remittance firms, crypto platforms, marketplaces, and PSPs. Clients include DLocal, RemotePass, and platforms like Deel, Airbnb, and Etsy as they expand into MENA.
The UAE remains Fuse’s anchor market, but the platform has begun enabling direct payouts in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan and supports wholesale foreign exchange for Indian and Chinese businesses operating in the UAE that need to repatriate funds through controlled corridors, some of the region’s busiest trade and remittance routes.
There are many startups in various regions with identical offerings but Davis sees more similarities with Visa-backed Currencycloud. Both offer virtual accounts, FX, and cross-border payments, “but while Currencycloud is global, Fuse is built for the Middle East,” he said.
And it’s striking at the right time. Businesses across MENA aren’t just underserved; they’re transacting more than ever, driven by a surge in e-commerce and digital payments. That demand, Davis believes, creates a rare window for regional infrastructure players to win.
“Global cross-border payments tend to be winner-takes-all markets,” he said. “But to win, you now need local specialists. That’s what we’re building.”
So far, it’s working. Fuse is processing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter and growing revenue more than 50% month-over-month. In fact, Davis says Fuse made more this quarter than it did all of last year. The company makes money by charging fees on each transaction.
Davis’s interest in solving cross-border payments for the Middle East came from firsthand experience. At TrueLayer, he helped scale the fintech from a data aggregator to a payments and open banking platform serving over 100,000 businesses. At crypto infrastructure startup BVNK, which he co-founded and served as chief product officer, he saw how hard it was for global businesses to expand into the Middle East.
“We were supporting global businesses using stablecoins to move money out of emerging markets,” he said. “We felt the pain of entering MENA—and so did others I was advising. That’s what sparked Fuse.”
He launched Fuse in 2023 with CTO James Smith, a longtime collaborator who led engineering at both TrueLayer and BVNK. The two now lead a 12-person team across engineering, product, and compliance.
Northzone, the European multi-stage VC that has backed the likes of Klarna and Spotify, led the $6.6 million round, with participation from Flourish Ventures, Alter Global, and notable angels, including Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and former Morgan Stanley MENA president George Makhoul.
“The Fuse team is transforming payment infrastructure in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets,” said Sanjot Malhi, partner at Northzone. “Their ability to simplify MENA’s complex cross-border flows is exactly what the region needs.”
Fuse plans to use the fresh capital to grow its team, secure additional regional licenses, and expand its product suite beyond the UAE.
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Plaid, which connects bank accounts to financial applications, has sold about $575 million worth of common stock at a $6.1 billion post-money valuation, the fintech company confirmed to TechCrunch.
The valuation is about less than half of the $13.4 billion that San Francisco-based Plaid was valued at when it raised a $425 million Series D in April 2021 in a round led by Altimeter Capital. A spokesperson acknowledged the decrease, saying it was “simply a reflection of the contraction of multiples across the market.”
Indeed, higher interest rates have led to lower valuations for many startups that last raised at the top of the high cycle in 2021.
Still, Plaid’s new valuation is about 15% higher than the $5.3 billion Visa was going to pay for the company before that acquisition deal fell apart in January of 2021 due to regulatory concerns.
Plaid will not go public in 2025 but it is a milestone the company continues “to track towards,” according to the spokesperson. In October 2023, Plaid named former Expedia exec Eric Hart to serve as its new chief financial officer. The fact that it appeared to be eyeing an IPO — albeit with no timeline — drew attention.
Today, the company maintains that it is “well-capitailized.”
“Plaid’s business is in a great position and we’re optimistic about the opportunity ahead,” the spokesperson said.
Franklin Templeton led the “oversubscribed” raise, which also included participation from new backers Fidelity Management and Research, BlackRock, and others in addition to existing investors NEA and Ribbit Capital. Plaid characterized the transaction as “not a Series E,” but rather a sale of common stock, which involves a company directly issuing new shares to raise capital. This is different from a secondary share sale, which occurs when existing shareholders sell their shares to other investors, without the company receiving any new capital.
The proceeds of the round will be used to address employee tax withholding obligations related to the conversion of expiring RSUs (restricted stock units) to shares, and to offer some liquidity to its current team via an employee tender offer, CEO and co-founder Zach Perret (pictured above) said in a blog post.
While the company did not break down how much capital exactly was going toward each initiative, a spokesperson told TechCrunch the majority of the secondary sale was going toward the conversion of the RSUs that will be expiring in the coming years.
“We raised the capital to cover the RSU expiry issue and there is a small tender for employees, but it is not the entirety of the round,” the spokesperson said.
Restricted stock units are typically issued to employees through a vesting schedule after they achieve required performance milestones or upon remaining with their employer for a particular length of time.
This raise comes on the heels of what Perret described as a “record-setting year on revenue, a return to positive operating margins, and a meaningful increase in the companies and markets” Plaid serves.
He didn’t provide hard revenue figures, saying that revenue grew over 25% in 2024 and that the company was approaching “sustained profitability.” In a shareholder letter viewed by TechCrunch, Perret also wrote that new products represented more than 20% of Plaid’s ARR in 2024, “compounding at 93% annually.”
Founded in 2012, Plaid got its start as a company that connects consumer bank accounts to financial applications but has since been gradually expanding its offerings to also include lending, identity verification, credit reporting, anti-fraud, and payments.
Being a multi-product company has led to traction beyond the traditional fintech customers it started out serving. President Jen Taylor told TechCrunch last June that enterprise and traditional financial institution growth was “starting to outpace the rest of its business.”
Overall, Plaid saw “a big upswing in the number of enterprises” it serves in 2024, Perret wrote in the shareholder letter. The company counts Citi, Robinhood, H&R Block, Invitation Homes, GoFundMe, Zillow, and Rocket as “key customers.”
Perret also wrote: “Our goal is to build software that makes the financial system easier and better for everyone. Our products are the bedrock upon which many of the most well-known financial brands are built – companies like Affirm, Chime, Robinhood, and SoFi.”
Plaid has raised about $1.3 billion in funding over its lifetime. Presently, it has 1,200 employees across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the EU.
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Djamo is one of several digital banking startups targeting Africa’s underbanked. But unlike many that focus on large markets like Nigeria, Egypt, or South Africa, Djamo has carved out a niche in Francophone West Africa, specifically the Ivory Coast and, more recently, Senegal. It now serves over one million customers across both countries.
The Y Combinator-backed fintech just raised $17 million to expand its product suite for these retail customers and the thousands of small businesses it has onboarded in the last two years.
The equity round, the largest ever for an Ivorian startup, surpasses Djamo’s $14 million Series A in 2022 and reflects continued investor confidence in its mission to make banking accessible and affordable.
Co-founder and CEO Hassan Bourgi declined to share the new valuation but said it has doubled since the last raise.
Bourgi founded Djamo with chief product and technical officer Régis Bamba in 2020 to close the financial access gap in French-speaking African countries, where few adults have bank accounts. Traditional banks in the region often cater to the affluent, leaving most of the population reliant on mobile money, a cheaper method that includes using phone numbers to make financial transactions.
Mobile money has been instrumental in expanding financial access across Africa. As of 2022, 28% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account, per the World Bank, and the region holds more than half of the world’s total. But that progress has also created a ceiling.
Most mobile money platforms offer basic services: cash-in, cash-out, P2P transfers, and bill payments. While useful, they don’t unlock more advanced financial tools like credit, investments, or long-term savings.
Djamo is positioning itself between mobile money and traditional banking. The startup offers the accessibility of mobile money with the financial depth of a bank account, a similar playbook that Softbank-backed OPay and Transsion-owned PalmPay have used to scale to tens of millions of customers in Nigeria.
Its target is a growing segment of users, mostly younger customers, who’ve outgrown mobile money wallets but still find traditional banks expensive, outdated, or inaccessible, the founders say.
“These users are evolving,” said Bourgi. “But they don’t want to go where their parents went, into institutions with predatory pricing and aren’t adapted to the new generation of customers. And this is what we are building, trying to become the go-to bank for this huge cohort of customers that is evolving now to more complex, wealth-building financing opportunities.”
Since our last coverage, Djamo has expanded beyond cards and peer-to-peer transfers. The Ivorian fintech now offers savings vaults, investment products — thanks to the region’s first fintech-issued brokerage license — and salary-linked bank accounts, which Bourgi sees as important to boosting customer engagement.
Like many neobanks, Djamo attracts banked users who treat it as a secondary account for smoother bill payments and mobile money integration. But it’s the unbanked, more difficult to activate, who show greater long-term potential. These users, who make up over 55% of Djamo’s base, often treat the app as their primary financial service.
Bourgi says nine in ten users who rely on Djamo as their main account come from this segment. To reach more of them, Djamo has adopted a hybrid approach, combining its app with offline agents who meet customers in person to facilitate transactions, similar to the mobile money model now more broadly adopted by fintechs across the continent.
Currently, only 5–10% of Djamo users receive salaries through the app. “The next phase for us,” Bourgi said, “is figuring out how to move from 10% to 50% of our users getting their salaries paid directly into Djamo.”
Meanwhile, Djamo is also ramping up services for small businesses—about 10,000 of them, many of whom started as retail users. According to CTO Bamba, the startup now provides bulk payments, payment links, and QR code tools to help merchants accept and manage payments directly within the app.
The fintech generates revenue from merchant fees on online card purchases and a premium tier plan, which 25% of users pay for. Bamba adds that the company is exploring additional revenue streams, including lending and earning interest on customer deposits. It is in the process of securing licenses that will allow it to offer interest-bearing savings accounts and credit products.
Djamo’s founders say the company has grown revenue 5x since 2022 and processed more than $4.5 billion in transactions since launch.
With its recent expansion into Senegal, Djamo has entered a market dominated by Wave, one of Africa’s largest fintechs known for low-cost mobile money transfers. But rather than compete directly, Djamo positions itself as a complementary service, offering a digital banking experience where users can store funds and access more advanced tools like savings, investments, and credit.
Now a 250-person team, Djamo is betting that its new round of funding, led by pan-African, gender-focused VC Janngo Capital, will help it scale those services across French-speaking Africa.
“We are thrilled to lead the largest VC round in Ivory Coast and double down on Djamo, a mission-driven fintech transforming access to financial services across Francophone West Africa,” said Fatoumata Bâ, founder and executive chair of Janngo Capital.
“In a region where fewer than 25% of adults have access to formal financial services, and where women are twice as likely to be excluded, this is a vital mission. With women making up a third of its users, Djamo is not only closing the gender gap but unlocking economic opportunity at scale.”
Other investors participating in the round include SANAD Fund for MSMEs (managed by Finance in Motion), Partech, Oikocredit, Enza Capital, and Y Combinator.
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Circle, the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, filed to go public on Tuesday.
The company, which makes money from interest earned on its reserve assets, reported that its 2024 revenue and reserve income was $1.68 billion, up from $1.45 billion the year prior. Circle’s 2024 net income was $156 million, down from $268 million in 2023.
This is Circle’s second attempt at listing on the stock exchange. The company previously tried to go public by combining with a SPAC in 2022 but scrapped its plans when the SEC didn’t approve the merger within an expected timeframe. Before failing, the SPAC deal valued Circle at $9 billion.
While it is not clear what value the company will fetch in its IPO, Renaissance Capital estimates that the company will attempt to raise $750 million in its offering.
According to the regulatory filing, investors with more than 5% ownership in the company include Accel, General Catalyst, Breyer, IDG Capital, and Oak Investment Partners.
Circle USDC in circulation are valued at $60 billion, according to the filing.
The company is planning its IPO amid the Trump administration’s supportive stance on crypto assets.
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