Plaid Raises $575 Million In Funding At $6.1 Billion Valuation

Forbes

03-04-2025

Plaid CEO Zach Perret is raising money to cover an upcoming tax bill and to let employees sell some of their Plaid stock.
San Francisco-based Plaid, whose main business is helping fintechs and other companies connect to consumers' bank accounts, is raising $575 million in a deal that values it at $6.1 billion, down more than 50% from the $13.4 billion it reached in 2021. The investment is being led by large asset management firms including Franklin Templeton, Fidelity Management and Research and BlackRock, with venture capital firms NEA and Ribbit also investing.
A spokesperson for the 12-year-old company says most of the proceeds will be used to cover tax liabilities that will come due over the next few years, when employees' restricted stock units (RSUs)—a form of equity compensation where a business promises to grant you stock at a future date–vest and convert into common stock.
Plaid will use a 'small portion' of the $575 million fundraise to buy back stock from employees in a tender offer, letting them cash out a small part of their Plaid stock, according to a spokesperson. After Plaid pays for its coming tax liability and the employee tender offer, it will use whatever is left of the $575 million to help fund its business, though it expects that to be 'a minimal amount.'
Stripe took a similar step in March 2023 with a $6.5 billion tender offer that allowed employees to sell their private shares in the company, and it has done at least two more tender offers since then.
In recent years, Plaid has expanded beyond its core bank-account-linking features into three new lines of business: credit-risk analytics, fraud prevention and pay-by-bank. That has helped reverse the growth slowdown the company saw in 2023, when it expanded just 12%. In 2024, its revenue rose 25% and exceeded $300 million, and its gross profit margin was roughly 80%, according to a person familiar with its business. The company still wasn't profitable on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis.
The fintech market has improved notably since it began on a downward trajectory in 2022. In the first quarter of 2025, fintechs raised roughly $10.3 billion in funding globally, according to CB Insights, the highest quarterly total since the first quarter of 2023. Digital bank Chime and buy-now, pay-later giant Klarna are planning to go public over the next few months, but Plaid is unlikely to try to IPO this year. 'Our hope is that we will get there in the next couple years, but no plans for a 2025 IPO,' Plaid CEO Zach Perret told Bloomberg in January. Last month, The Information reported that Plaid was planning a fundraise at a valuation of roughly $6 billion.