Top 10 Fintech Startups to Watch in 2026

Executive Summary

The global fintech sector entered 2026 with unprecedented momentum. Global fintech funding reached $51.8 billion in 2025, up 27% from the previous year, with fewer deals but significantly larger cheques — the average deal size hit $17.7 million, the highest since 2021. With Fortune Business Insights projecting the global fintech market to reach $1.76 trillion by 2034, the startups leading this expansion represent the most consequential infrastructure plays in modern finance.

From AI-powered Wall Street analysts to cloud-native prime brokerages filing billion-dollar IPOs, the companies on this list are not speculative bets — they are operational platforms processing billions in transaction volume and reshaping how financial services are built, delivered, and consumed. This ranking considers funding scale, revenue growth, technological differentiation, and market positioning as of February 2026.

Key Takeaways

• The top 10 fintech startups have raised a combined $6.4 billion in funding, with three valued above $3 billion.
• Ramp leads at $22.5 billion valuation after processing $55 billion in annualised payments — a 5.5x increase in two years.
• Clear Street filed for a $1 billion IPO at $12 billion valuation, marking one of 2026's largest fintech public offerings.
• AI-native platforms dominate the list — 7 of 10 companies use AI as core infrastructure, not a feature bolt-on.
• Enterprise LLM spending in financial services is projected to reach $15 billion in 2026, according to Menlo Ventures.

Top 10 Fintech Startups to Watch in 2026 — Summary Ranking

Rank	Company	Headquarters	Focus Area	Latest Valuation	Total Raised	Key Milestone
1	Ramp	New York, USA	AI Corporate Spend Management	$22.5B	$1.6B+	$55B annualised payment volume; 26M+ AI decisions/month
2	Clear Street	New York, USA	Cloud-Native Prime Brokerage	$12B	$1.48B	IPO filed Feb 2026; $1B+ revenue run rate
3	Plaid	San Francisco, USA	Banking Connectivity API	$6.1B	$734M	Powers 8,000+ fintech apps; used by 50%+ of Americans
4	Mercury	San Francisco, USA	Digital Banking for Startups	$3.5B	$500M	$650M annualised revenue; 200,000+ business customers
5	Rogo	New York, USA	AI-Powered Financial Analytics	$750M	$165M	$75M Series C led by Sequoia; European expansion
6	Sardine	San Francisco, USA	AI Fraud Prevention & Compliance	$660M	$145M	130% ARR growth; 2.2B+ devices profiled across 70 countries
7	Datarails	New York, USA	AI-Native FP&A Platform	$550M	$175M	70% YoY revenue growth; AI agents for CFOs launched
8	Mesh	San Francisco, USA	Crypto Payments Infrastructure	$482M	$82M	$82M Series B for cross-chain payment settlement
9	Rain	Los Angeles, USA	Earned Wage Access	$340M	$333M	$75M Series B; rapid enterprise adoption
10	GoodLeap	Roseville, USA	Sustainable Home Financing	$17.7B (est.)	$1.6B	$32B+ financed; 1.2M homeowners served; 24 securitisations

1. Ramp — AI-Powered Corporate Spend Management

Ramp has emerged as the fastest-growing corporate card and spend management platform in fintech history. After raising a $500 million Series E at a $22.5 billion valuation in 2025, the New York-based company now processes $55 billion in annualised payment volume — a 5.5x increase in just two years.

What distinguishes Ramp from legacy expense management tools is its AI-first architecture. The platform makes over 26 million automated decisions per month, covering expense categorisation, receipt matching, policy enforcement, and anomaly detection. Ramp's AI agents autonomously close expense reports, flag duplicate subscriptions, and negotiate vendor contracts — reducing manual finance operations by up to 80%, according to the company.

"We're building the operating system for finance teams," said Ramp CEO Eric Glyman. "The goal is to make every dollar a company spends smarter."

2. Clear Street — Cloud-Native Prime Brokerage

Clear Street filed for a $1 billion IPO in February 2026 at a $12 billion valuation, making it one of the largest fintech public offerings of the year. The company has raised $1.48 billion in total funding, with its pre-IPO round led by Baillie Gifford and SBI Holdings.

Clear Street's cloud-native platform replaces decades-old prime brokerage infrastructure with modern clearing, custody, and execution technology. Revenue surged 137% year-over-year to $463.6 million in 2024, with a $1 billion+ run rate projected for 2025. The platform now serves 674 institutional clients with $15.5 billion in client balances and a 99.5% retention rate. Goldman Sachs is the lead underwriter for the IPO.

3. Plaid — Banking Connectivity API Infrastructure

Plaid remains the backbone of America's fintech ecosystem. Its banking connectivity APIs power over 8,000 fintech applications and are used by more than 50% of Americans with bank accounts. The company completed a $575 million secondary transaction in 2025 at a $6.1 billion valuation.

Plaid's infrastructure enables everything from neobanking apps to investment platforms to connect securely with consumers' bank accounts. As embedded finance accelerates — MarketsandMarkets projects 14% CAGR for embedded finance through 2028 — Plaid's position as the connective layer between traditional banks and fintech applications becomes increasingly strategic.

4. Mercury — Digital Banking for Startups

Mercury raised a $300 million Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a $3.5 billion valuation in March 2025, more than doubling its previous valuation. The digital banking platform now serves over 200,000 companies with $20 billion in customer deposits.

Mercury's annualised revenue reached $650 million by Q3 2025 — up 30% year-over-year — making it one of the few fintechs that is GAAP profitable for three consecutive years. The company processed $156 billion in payment volume in 2025, a 64% increase from the prior year. Mercury has applied for an OCC national bank charter, signalling its ambition to become a fully licensed financial institution.

"We want to build the financial stack that every ambitious company needs," said Mercury CEO Immad Akhund. "Not just a bank account, but the entire financial operating system."

5. Rogo — AI-Powered Financial Analytics for Wall Street

Rogo closed a $75 million Series C led by Sequoia Capital in January 2026 at a $750 million valuation, with participation from Henry Kravis, Wells Fargo, Thrive Capital, and Khosla Ventures. Total funding now exceeds $165 million across four rounds.

Rogo is building what it calls "Wall Street's first AI analyst" — agentic AI systems that automate financial research, due diligence, and deal analysis for investment banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds. The platform integrates with S&P Capital IQ data and includes a spreadsheet agent acquired through its purchase of Subset in September 2025. Clients include Nomura and several major bulge-bracket banks.

6. Sardine — AI Fraud Prevention and Compliance

Sardine raised a $70 million Series C led by Activant Capital in February 2025, with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and Moody's Analytics. The $660 million valuation reflects 130% annual recurring revenue growth and a client base of 300+ enterprises across 70 countries.

Sardine's platform has profiled over 2.2 billion devices — one of the largest financial crime databases globally. Its AI agent suite automates KYC onboarding, transaction monitoring, alert resolution, and bot detection, including identifying fraud attempts using OpenAI Operator and Selenium. Notable clients include FIS, Deel, GoDaddy, and Santander Bank. As compliance alert volumes have surged 800% industry-wide, Sardine's automated approach reduces false positives by 4x.

7. Datarails — AI-Native FP&A for CFOs

Datarails secured a $70 million Series C led by One Peak in January 2026 at a $550 million valuation, bringing total funding to $175 million. The AI-native financial planning and analysis platform reported 70% year-over-year revenue growth, with 50%+ of 2025 revenue coming from products launched within the prior 12 months.

Datarails targets the $131 billion Office of the CFO software market (projected by 2028) with an Excel-native approach — acknowledging that 99% of finance professionals spend 3+ hours daily in spreadsheets. In January 2026, the company launched AI agents for Strategy, Planning, and Reporting that generate board-ready insights from consolidated ERP, CRM, and HRIS data. The team has nearly doubled to 400+ employees.

8. Mesh — Crypto Payments Infrastructure

Mesh raised $82 million in a Series B round in 2025, valuing the company at $482 million. The San Francisco-based startup provides integrated payment solutions for cross-chain cryptocurrency settlement, enabling businesses to accept and process crypto payments alongside traditional payment rails.

As CB Insights noted in its 2025 Fintech 100 report, crypto infrastructure companies are experiencing renewed growth as institutional adoption accelerates. Mesh sits at the intersection of two converging trends: the $25 billion+ tokenised treasury market and the broader shift toward multi-rail payment processing. The platform's modular architecture allows enterprises to integrate crypto payments without rebuilding existing payment infrastructure.

9. Rain — Earned Wage Access

Rain closed a $75 million Series B in 2025 at a $340 million valuation, with total funding reaching $333 million including debt facilities. The Los Angeles-based company provides on-demand earned wage access — allowing workers to access a portion of their earned wages before payday.

Rain's platform addresses a structural pain point: according to the Federal Reserve, 37% of Americans cannot cover a $400 emergency expense. By integrating directly with employer payroll systems, Rain eliminates the predatory fees associated with payday lending while giving employers a zero-cost benefit that improves retention. The rapid enterprise adoption trajectory suggests Rain is well positioned to capture share in the $1 trillion+ US payroll market.

10. GoodLeap — Sustainable Home Financing at Scale

GoodLeap has financed over $32 billion in sustainable home improvements for 1.2 million homeowners across all 50 US states, making it the dominant platform in green home financing. The company's estimated valuation exceeds $17 billion based on secondary market pricing, with $1.6 billion in total equity raised from investors including NEA, Brookfield Asset Management, and MSD Partners.

GoodLeap completed 24 securitisations through December 2025, including a $523 million home improvement securitisation sponsored by Bank of America. The company's GoodGrid Virtual Power Plant, launched in California in 2024, has already returned $200,000+ to homeowners and is expanding to Texas. With a sub-1% default rate and an addressable US market of $450-500 billion annually for sustainable home upgrades, GoodLeap represents the convergence of fintech and climate technology.

Industry Analysis: What Defines the 2026 Fintech Leaders

Several structural themes emerge from this ranking. First, AI is no longer a feature — it is the architecture. Seven of the ten companies on this list use artificial intelligence as core platform infrastructure, from Ramp's 26 million monthly automated decisions to Sardine's 2.2 billion device profiles to Rogo's agentic financial analysts. This aligns with Gartner's projection that 33% of enterprise software will incorporate agentic AI by 2028.

Second, the era of "growth at all costs" is over. Mercury, Ramp, and Clear Street are all profitable or approaching profitability, reflecting a market that rewards unit economics over user acquisition. As Crunchbase reported, fintech funding in 2025 concentrated in fewer, larger rounds — suggesting investors are doubling down on proven winners rather than spreading bets across early-stage experiments.

Third, infrastructure plays are outperforming application-layer startups. Plaid (banking connectivity), Clear Street (clearing and custody), and Sardine (fraud prevention) all provide foundational infrastructure that other fintechs build upon — creating network effects and switching costs that consumer-facing apps rarely achieve.

2025-2026 Fintech Market Statistics

Metric	2024	2025	2026 (Projected)	Source
Global Fintech Funding	$40.8B	$51.8B	$60B+	Crunchbase
Average Deal Size	$12.3M	$17.7M	$20M+	Crunchbase
Embedded Finance CAGR	—	14%	14%	MarketsandMarkets
Enterprise Apps with AI Agents	5%	12%	20%	Gartner Research
Tokenised Treasury Market	$10B	$25B	$50B+	Bloomberg Intelligence

Forward Outlook: 12-36 Months

The fintech landscape over the next 12 to 36 months will be shaped by three forces: the IPO cycle, AI agent adoption, and regulatory convergence. Clear Street's IPO in February 2026 may trigger a broader wave of fintech public offerings, with Chime and Navan both positioned for 2026 listings.

AI agent deployment in financial services will accelerate significantly. Deloitte's 2024 AI report states that "organisations that move from experimentation to operational AI orchestration will gain compounding productivity advantages." Companies like Rogo, Sardine, and Datarails are already operationalising this thesis with production AI agents handling research, compliance, and financial planning workflows.

Regulatory clarity will also play a defining role. Mercury's application for an OCC bank charter and the EU's evolving digital finance regulations will establish templates for how fintech platforms graduate from technology companies to regulated financial institutions.

Why This Matters

The fintech startups dominating 2026 are not simply building better financial products — they are reconstructing the infrastructure of global finance. From Ramp's AI-automated corporate spending to Clear Street's cloud-native replacement of Wall Street's legacy systems to GoodLeap's $32 billion in climate-aligned financing, these companies represent a structural shift in how capital is managed, moved, and deployed.

For investors, enterprise buyers, and financial institutions evaluating partnership and competitive strategies, understanding these ten companies is essential. They are the platforms upon which the next generation of financial services will be built.

Bibliography

1. Crunchbase — Fintech Funding Jumped 27% in 2025
2. Fortune Business Insights — Global Fintech Market Forecast to 2034
3. Menlo Ventures — 2025 Mid-Year LLM Market Update
4. Gartner Research — 33% of Enterprise Apps to Include Agentic AI by 2028
5. MarketsandMarkets — Embedded Finance Growth Projections
6. Fintech Global — Rogo Raises $75M Series C
7. Fintool — Clear Street IPO at $12 Billion Valuation
8. Mercury — Series C Announcement at $3.5B Valuation
9. Sardine — $70M Series C for AI Fraud Prevention
10. Datarails — $70M Series C for AI CFO Platform
11. CB Insights — Fintech 100: Most Promising Startups of 2025
12. Deloitte Insights — AI Transformation Reports
13. Bloomberg Intelligence — Tokenised Asset Market Forecasts
14. Crunchbase — Fintech Venture Momentum Forecast 2026