This week, we look at Pipe’s four new AI agents, Neon’s $129 million Series E funding round, April $38 million Series B to simplify U.S tax filing, and Stripe’s acquisition of Orum, the paytech startup.
The fintech offering embedded capital products to small businesses, Pipe has launched four new AI agents to facilitate SMEs. The agents namely treasury agent, fraud and compliance agent, recovery and sales will reduce weeks of human-managed operations into seconds.
The AI-native company seeking to offer tailored solutions to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has also indicated its plans to enter new geographies and expand its offerings to strengthen capabilities of smaller businesses. Earlier, AI-backed decision-making tools and offerings of such caliber were only available to large enterprises.
“Pipe remains focused on being an AI-first fintech. Rather than layering AI onto old workflows, we’ve built core infrastructure to automate underwriting, payments, and compliance from the ground up. With each agent shipped, we’re collapsing what used to take weeks of ops into seconds, accelerating our scale 10 times and providing better experiences for small businesses,” said Claurelle Rakipovic, Chief Product Officer at Pipe.
In an extension of its Series E funding round completed in September 2024, Brazilian fintech Neon has raised another $129 million. Backed by investors who participated in the 2024 round such as BBVA and General Atlantic, Neon also witnessed new support in form of DEG, a subsidiary of KfW Group and International Finance Corporation.
CEO of Neon, Pedro Conrade stated, “In the face of macroeconomic uncertainty, we will take a cautious approach to growing our credit portfolio, with a focus on sustainable growth.”
The fintech company, catering to its Brazilian consumer base offers digital financial services including current accounts, credit cards, personal loans, and investment products. With the latest funding, Neon aims to not only scale its operations across Brazil but also expand its clientele to ensure inclusion of lower-middle income groups.
Founded in 2021 by Daniel Marcous and Ben Borodach, April is a fintech that offers tax filing services in the US. Based out of Israel, the startup earlier this year obtained permit to operate across all 50 American states, making it a nationwide tax filing platform.
In its recent Series B funding round, April has raised another $38 million bringing its total investor funding to $78 million. The recent capital will enable April to further simplify US tax filing and expand its clientele consisting of state and federal tax filers.
As per Borodach, “Leveraging an AI assisted development process, we built a compliant, national e-file platform from the ground up and made it available inside the apps people already use to manage their money. Now we’re extending that foundation to address a much broader range of tax needs beyond filing.”
In the latest acquisition events, fintech giant Stripe has acquired payment orchestration platform Orum. Founded in 2019 by Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum connects businesses to instant payment capabilities via API solutions.
Orum that has raised $82 million to date is backed by a strong set of investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Accel, Canapi, Homebrew, BoxGroup, and Inspired Capital. Other investors include Clocktower Ventures, American Express Ventures, SVB Capital, and Primary Ventures.
The payment platform announced the acquisition by Stripe while terming it as ‘a rare opportunity to accelerate Orum’s mission’. Currently valued at $91.5 billion, Stripe earlier acquired crypto wallet infrastructure provider Privy in June and Bridge in February.
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