Weekly update #156

Builders Fintech Funding Index: 228 (last full week, week of 19 Oct). 41 equity rounds recorded, against a 12-week average of 18. Median disclosed USD round: index 91. Our round coverage expanded in September 2026, so the Index overstates activity until mid-December. Full reading.

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Guidewire agreed to buy hyperexponential for $1.7B in cash, Kalshi raised $1B at a $40B valuation, and Itaú Unibanco agreed to acquire NeoSpace for BRL 2.925B, about $580M. Below: McKinsey & Company‘s Agentic AI in transaction monitoring (a more than 40% cut in human processing time, 30 to 50 percent of the agent network spent on quality control), the week’s rounds and funds, and three managers raising now.

Builders in Fintech: In this episode, I sit down with Andrej Benčić, co-founder and CEO of Tenderly. You can check the last episode here on YouTube or here on Spotify.

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The report: agentic AI in transaction monitoring

McKinsey & Company, Agentic AI in transaction monitoring: How banks can scale AI in compliance. The October 2026 article from the Risk & Resilience Practice on how banks move from AI assistants to agents that run a whole compliance investigation. Here my main takeaways:

The numbers. Banks that run agents across the full investigation report a more than 40% reduction in human processing time in transaction monitoring. Measured against a predefined checklist, agent-written reports are more complete than analyst-written ones, with every claim referenced to its source. In one proof of concept, agents reviewed the full history of every alert, including customers with more than 15,000 transactions, ran the same eight web checks on every case and pulled in every earlier alert for the customer.

The design. McKinsey names five choices: design to quality, split the work between agents and humans, keep the economics visible down to token consumption per case, build iteratively with functional experts, and manage the new risks. Quality takes 30 to 50 percent of the agent network. The build rests on three pillars: a portable agentic platform in the cloud, an “agentic factory” of agents and deterministic tools that runs from alert to recommendation, and evaluation and governance built in from the start. A first version can be built in weeks, with 15 to 20 squads of three to five agents each.

The team. In a traditional setup, 60 to 70 percent of staff work the process, 20 to 25 percent run supporting IT and 10 to 15 percent handle quality control and audit. With agents, process effort falls 30 to 50 percent, IT shifts to enabling agents and connecting data, and quality control shifts to monitoring the system. Commerzbank’s Hans-Georg Beyer says talent is the main enabler: compliance experts had to take part in prompt engineering, and bankwide standards from day one prevent what he calls “compliance debt”.

The rollout. The route is three horizons: prove one use case, widen it to adjacent steps such as second-level alerting and suspicious activity reports, then reuse it across fraud, sanctions screening and KYC. One large bank used the same principles to draft corporate credit risk assessments and halved the time credit officers spent on analysis. McKinsey puts the hardest obstacle in human change: trust in the output, continuous work between data scientists and compliance experts after go-live, and reinvesting part of the productivity gain in running the system.

The read. The number that matters is 40%: the time banks cut when agents run the whole investigation instead of one step of it. McKinsey’s case is that the gain comes from redesign, with a large share of the agent network built to check the rest and every conclusion traceable to its source. This week’s deals follow the same logic. Hyphenate raised $45M for agents that run finance workflows on top of the ERP, Overwatch raised $15M for AI-driven fraud and cybercrime tracking, Cognitive Credit raised $40M on outputs that trace back to source, and Mollie lets an assistant prepare a transfer but not release it without approval. Better placed: vendors that sell traceability with the agent. Exposed: banks whose AI stops at the analyst’s desk while the process stays sized for headcount. Watch whether the figure holds outside transaction monitoring, where the one cited example is a halving of analyst time on credit risk assessments.

The week in six stories

1. Guidewire agrees to acquire hyperexponential for $1.7B in cash. Up to $400M more is tied to recurring revenue targets. The London company sells an agentic underwriting and pricing platform for commercial P&C insurers and supports decisions on more than $75B of annual premium. Guidewire funds the deal with $1B of new term loans and cash; closing is expected in the second quarter of its fiscal 2027.
2. Kalshi raises $1B at a $40B valuation. Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management co-led, with Tiger Global and Dragoneer taking part according to a source cited by Reuters. The valuation was $22B in May, when Coatue led a $1B round. This year Kalshi added perpetual futures on crypto, equity indexes and metals after CFTC approval.
3. Itaú Unibanco agrees to acquire NeoSpace for BRL 2.925B, about $580M. Part is paid at closing and the rest deferred over five years; CADE and the Central Bank of Brazil must approve. NeoSpace builds foundation models and has worked for Itaú for almost two years; founder Bruno Pierobon stays as CEO.
4. Wealthsimple raises C425MataC13.8B valuation led by GIC. The round combines a C300MprimaryofferingwithasecondaryofuptoC125M, and Power Corporation, IGM Financial, ICONIQ, CPP Investments and Inovia are participating. Assets under administration reached C169.2Bat30September,fromC100B at its October 2025 raise of C750MatC10B.
5. Ripple receives final OCC approval for Ripple National Trust Bank. The bank will manage the segregated reserves behind RLUSD, act as collateral trustee and provide fiduciary custody for digital assets. The OCC gave conditional approval on 12 December 2025. A trust charter cannot take deposits or lend.
6. Hyphenate raises a $45M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners. The company, formerly Maximor, builds agents that run on a company’s ERP and banks across order-to-cash, treasury and reporting. B Capital, Foundation Capital, BoldCap and Gaia Ventures took part, and total funding is now $54M. Figures on revenue and customers are company-reported.

Also: Collective raises $100M, including a $40M Series B led by General Catalyst, QED Investors and Gradient Ventures; Nevis raises $70M led by EQT; Casap raises a $56M Series B led by Base10 Partners [verify: single trade source]; Cognitive Credit raises $40M led by Summit Partners; Lovable runs an $80M employee secondary sale at a $13.3B valuation; Lovey secures up to £250M of credit from Pollen Street Capital; Neo Financial closes a $185M warehouse facility led by ATB Financial; OPay sets terms for a NYSE IPO of up to $336M.

Funds. Eight new vehicles this week: Disruptive (10BFlagshipFund,itsfirstblindpool),APVentures(300M Fund III, industrial and energy technology), Entourage (€100M Fund II, pre-seed and seed in AI, robotics and deeptech), Nclude Fund (over 112Mincommitments,fintechinAfricaandtheMiddleEast),BeginCapital(100M Fund II for deep tech founders), Auriga Partners (€80M interim close of its second fund, cybersecurity), BY Venture Partners ($60M Fund III, AI-native enterprise software) and Z_One Fund (first close above €35M, pre-seed and seed in Italy).

All rounds

Equity

• Kalshi — raises $1B at a $40B valuation co-led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management, regulated exchange for event contracts and futures, US
• Wealthsimple — raises C425MataC13.8B valuation led by GIC, chequing, investing and credit card app, Canada
• Collective — $100M, including a $40M Series B led by General Catalyst, QED Investors and Gradient Ventures and $60M from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, financial OS for solo businesses, US
• Lovable — $80M employee secondary sale at a $13.3B valuation
• Nevis — $70M led by EQT Group
• Casap — $56M Series B led by Base10 Partners, agentic AI for financial services
• Hyphenate — $45M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners, autonomous finance agents for CFO teams, US
• PhotonPay — $40M, stablecoin-centric financial OS
• Cognitive Credit — $40M growth investment led by Summit Partners, AI and data for credit research, UK
• Robinhood Ventures Fund I — $30M of preferred stock in Erebor Bank, national bank for AI, defence and digital-asset companies, US
• CapitalOS — $21.9M Series A led by LGVP, cards and bill pay for B2B platforms, US
• Nous — $17M led by Heartcore Capital and Mosaic Ventures, household AI agent, UK
• Overwatch — $15M Series A led by Mouro Capital, AI-driven fraud and cybercrime tracking, US
• Predicate — $8M Series A led by Blockchain Capital
• FinMaq — $6.5M Series A led by Accion, equipment financing
• BOB — $5.5M seed led by Mischief, AI finance employee for small businesses, US
• Mochatrade — $5.5M seed led by CoinFund

Debt and credit

• Lovey — up to £250M credit facility from Pollen Street Capital
• Neo Financial — $185M syndicated warehouse facility led by ATB Financial, credit card receivables, Canada
• Bizcap — $175M credit facility, small business funding for North American growth

VC funds

• Disruptive — $10B Flagship Fund, first blind pool, about 10 late-stage technology companies, US
• AP Ventures — $300M Fund III, early-stage industrial and energy technology, UK
• Entourage — €100M Fund II, pre-seed and seed in AI, robotics and deeptech, UK
• Nclude Fund — over $112M in commitments, fintech in Africa and the Middle East
• Begin Capital — $100M Fund II for deep tech founders
• Auriga Partners — €80M interim close of its second fund, cybersecurity
• BY Venture Partners — $60M Fund III, AI-native enterprise software, UAE
• Z_One Fund (Eureka! Venture) — first close above €35M, pre-seed and seed in AI applications and urbantech, Italy

Market news

Stablecoins, crypto and tokenisation

• Ripple receives final OCC approval for Ripple National Trust Bank
• OCC finalises GENIUS Act rule for payment stablecoin issuers, effective 18 January 2027
• HSBC launches RedCoin, its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, to 3.3M PayMe users
• Hong Kong approves first secondary trading of tokenised public funds, with two money market funds trading 24/7
• DTCC puts its Tokenization Service live with 20 participating firms
• Hercle joins Bancomat’s Eur.Bankeuro stablecoin project
• ACI Worldwide and Circle bring USDC settlement to payments infrastructure in Colombia
• Noah powers USD and EUR accounts for Bitget Wallet’s 100M users
• Binance is impacted by a $6.3B security incident, described as the largest crypto hack on record

M&A and capital markets

• Guidewire agrees to acquire hyperexponential for $1.7B in cash
• Itaú Unibanco agrees to acquire AI startup NeoSpace for BRL 2.925B, about $580M
• OPay sets terms for a NYSE IPO of up to $336M, with a $200M Stanbic placement alongside
• Finda and Jeonbuk Bank buy Daewon Savings Bank for 12 billion won

Licensing and regulation

• Bank of England orders a skilled person review of Revolut’s product approvals, FT reports
• Sezzle applies to the OCC for a national bank charter and to the FDIC for deposit insurance
• Itaú Unibanco notifies Brazil’s central bank of its crypto trading and custody services

Growth, products and partnerships

• Mollie launches ChatGPT and Claude integrations covering 60+ payment and finance operations
• Mastercard partners with MrBeast’s Beast Industries on creator co-brand cards
• Mercury launches Payroll inside its banking app for its 450,000 customers
• Adyen reports €738.1M Q3 net revenue, up 23%, and sets a 50% EBITDA margin for 2026
• Monzo opens accounts to the public in Spain
• Planet partners with YouLend to offer embedded financing to European merchants
• TBC Bank Uzbekistan launches Apple Pay
• Uzum Bank reports 142,000 Apple Pay sign-ups in the first 24 hours in Uzbekistan
• Affirm becomes exclusive pay-over-time provider at Sam’s Club
• Revolut sets up Revolut Ventures to bring venture capital to retail investors
• Revolut launches personal loans in the UK, its first lending product as a UK bank
• Lovable opens its first London office with 70 staff, targeting 100 by year-end

On the platform

Companies raising and products listed on Builders in Fintech this week.

Raising now on the platform

• CashAid / Mam-Ne-Fo Technologies — accessible financial-information tools for people with disabilities, especially visually impaired users. Pre-seed, Ghana, raising $200K.

Listings are provided by the companies, not verified, and not an offer. Raising? Get listed at [buildersinfintech.ai/raising](http://buildersinfintech.ai/raising).

Products

• Ripple — payments, custody, stablecoin and treasury infrastructure for institutions; it received final OCC approval for its trust bank this week. Docs, llms.txt and an MCP server are listed.
• Chequing by Wealthsimple — Canadian app for chequing, trading, managed investing and a credit card; the company raised C$425M this week. llms.txt and an MCP server are listed.

Raising now

Space for GPs and solo GPs launching funds. Not paid. If you’re raising and want to be listed, message me on LinkedIn.

• Parallax Ventures — fintech, LatAm. Raising Fund II. [link] · gennari@parallax.vc
• Founder Factor — YC-focused. Just closed investments in YC W26 and is expanding the current vehicle to double down on the batch. [link]
• RedFish Capital Partners — private equity, Italian SMEs in growth and mature phases. €200M+ AUM. Raising a new AIF with a soft commitment from the European Investment Fund. redfish.capital · investor.relations@redfish.capital

Nothing here is investment advice.

Events, next 30 days

• Hong Kong FinTech Week — Hong Kong, 2–6 Nov
• Africa Stablecoin Summit — Johannesburg, 12–13 Nov
• Solana Breakpoint — London, 15–17 Nov
• Singapore FinTech Festival — Singapore, 18–20 Nov
• Fintech Nerdcon — San Diego, 19–20 Nov

Later:Bitcoin MENA, Abu Dhabi (7–8 Dec) · Abu Dhabi Finance Week (7–10 Dec) · TOKEN2049 Dubai (21–22 Apr 2027) · Money20/20 Asia, Bangkok (27–29 Apr 2027)

Want an event listed or sponsored? DM me.

Previous edition: Weekly update #155