#623
What if It All Goes Right?

• AgentSmyth closed an $8.7m Seed round to deploy autonomous AI agents that compress research-to-trade workflows for institutional desks.

• Bunch expanded into Luxembourg, onboarded their first Private Equity clients, and grew AUA to €5b+ this year.

• CapIntel formalized a strategic collaboration with KPMG Canada to modernize wealth management through digital advisor tools and implementation frameworks.

• Diesta scaled ACVs by 4x this year and expanded across three continents, now managing insurance premium payments across the UK, EU and US.

• Finster closed the Series A financing round and is providing AI native workflows to blue-chip banking and asset management customers on both sides of the Atlantic.

• Grâce signed their first major luxury brands including LVMH, going live with embedded coverage in multiple European markets.

• Mattilda secured a $50m credit line from Lendable to scale its platform for private schools across Latin America - fueling product launches, regional expansion, and strategic acquisitions.

• Monato received an IFPE license (licensed electronic payments institution). Now connected to SPEI, Mexico’s real-time interbank payments system, and ready to scale embedded payments infrastructure in Mexico.

• Mondu secured a €100m debt facility from J.P. Morgan Payments and announced a strategic collaboration to expand B2B payment solutions across Europe.

• NYDIG entered a definitive agreement to acquire Crusoe’s bitcoin mining business, integrating 270MW of power generation technology to drive near-zero direct cost of electricity.

• Octane secured a $100m Series F round led by Valar Ventures at a $1.3b valuation, fueling its expansion into new recreational markets.

• Performativ signed its first multi-million Euro enterprise contract, reaching €40b+ AUA across wealth and asset managers in 7 countries.

• Piana launched its Electric Vehicle payments product, supporting unified fleet payments and hybrid energy fleet transitions.

• Sigma360 was recognized as the #1 Adverse Media Solution for 2025 by Chartis Research, leveraging AI to monitor global sources in 50+ languages.

• Simetrik announced an additional $30m in Series B funding led by Goldman Sachs (to bring the total size of the round up to $85m) - more details here.

• Strike closed a $13.5m Series A to accelerate its regional expansion across Latin America and further develop its AI powered continuous pentesting and cybersecurity platform for enterprise customers.

• Vestwell announced the acquisition of Accrue 401k, a move that will transition nearly 30,000 retirement plans and 350,000 savers to its platform following Gusto’s acquisition of Guideline.

• Zefir closed the Series A financing round and scaled to €300m+ in residential real estate GMV, delivering the first AI-native home-buying journey in France.

Card Declined - November 2025
Visa and Mastercard’s $38b settlement with U.S. merchants cracks open the long-standing illusion that card rewards come at no cost, acknowledging that merchants have been footing much of the bill. The deal modestly lowers interchange fees and, more importantly, allows merchants to reject high-fee premium cards, putting once untouchable perks at risk, especially in smaller shops. How widely merchants exercise this new discretion, and whether a court approves the settlement, will determine its real impact on checkout behavior. Longer term, congressional momentum behind the Credit Card Competition Act looms large, making this agreement feel as much like regulatory appeasement as industry reform.

Scrapping Up Fortunes - May 2025
A new face of the American dream is emerging - not the flashy tech founder, but the unassuming entrepreneur who builds wealth through “boring businesses” like dental chains, beverage distributors, and commercial equipment suppliers. This cohort of quietly affluent operators prioritizes steady cash flow, local defensibility, and long-term ownership over moonshot bets, forming the backbone of what some call the stealthy wealthy. Data from Princeton and the University of Chicago underscores the trend: private business income is now the largest and fastest-growing source of earnings for the top 1%, and an even bigger share for the 0.1%. Behind every vending machine or floor scraper is someone patiently accumulating wealth, reminding us that tomorrow’s fortunes may come from today’s most overlooked services.

When AI Retires - November 2025
Anthropic has introduced “exit interviews” for retiring models amid concerns about shutdown-avoidant behaviors, committing to preserve weights indefinitely and document each model’s preferences before decommissioning. The shift comes as corporate adoption of generative AI accelerates: a Wharton–GBK survey shows weekly usage more than doubling year over year, with most firms now tracking ROI and reporting positive returns. Yet optimism skews toward senior leaders, while middle managers remain cautious and note lingering uncertainty despite rising investment and unexpected demand for interns. Together, these trends highlight a narrowing gap between AI capability and real-world deployment, even as the nature of what’s being deployed becomes more ambiguous.

BNPL for Tomahawk Missiles - October 2025
Europe’s proposed €150b SAFE program effectively turns rearmament into a collective “buy now, pay later” scheme as NATO members confront tight fiscal constraints and dwindling bank appetite for defense lending. With traditional financiers pulling back, governments are increasingly turning to shared borrowing, guarantees, and even fintech lenders to fund defense supply chains. The British Business Bank’s move to guarantee up to 70% of loan losses underscores how public balance sheets are being used to mobilize private capital for war production. In essence, fintech’s democratization of credit is now bleeding into geopolitics, transforming European militarization into a macro-scale installment plan.

AI at $1.8 Trillion Scale - May 2025
Norway’s $1.8t oil fund, owner of roughly 1.5% of every listed company on earth, is using AI to trade less, not more, saving $100m so far and targeting $400m annually through smarter internalization and better-timed execution. Its push reflects a broader shift across asset management, where most firms now deploy or plan to deploy AI primarily to cut costs. The trend extends well beyond finance: UnitedHealth already runs more than 1,000 production AI applications across insurance, care delivery, and pharmacy operations, embedding automation into day-to-day workflows. Together, these examples mark a turning point where large incumbents aren’t experimenting with AI - they’re operationalizing it at scale to reshape core functions across the economy.