What is Plaid?
Open-finance data network connecting bank accounts to fintech and enterprise apps.
- Category
- Open finance infrastructure
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, CA
- Founded
- 2013
- Employees
- ~1,200
- Total funding
- ~$1.3B disclosed
- Valuation
- $8B tender (2026)
What is Plaid?
Plaid is a financial-data infrastructure company that lets consumers and businesses connect bank accounts to apps for payments, lending, investing, identity, and personal finance.
Plaid sits between financial institutions and digital-finance products, standardizing account connectivity, balances, transactions, identity, income, and payments APIs. The company says its network reaches thousands of financial institutions across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe, and it is embedded in consumer apps, lenders, payroll products, wealth platforms, and enterprise finance workflows.
The business expanded after the blocked Visa acquisition from classic account-linking into identity verification, fraud, income, transfer, and open-banking compliance tools. Plaid's 2025 funding round reset the valuation from the 2021 peak, but the company followed with a 2026 employee tender at an $8 billion valuation, signaling continued private-market demand.
What does Plaid offer?
Plaid offers APIs for account linking, data access, payments, fraud, identity, income, lending, and open-banking compliance.
- Auth· Bank account linking
- Transactions· Financial data
- Identity Verification· Fraud and KYC
- Transfer· Payments
- Income· Lending
- Signal· Risk
- Assets· Lending
- Open Finance· Compliance
Sources:Plaid productsPlaid pricing
How does Plaid make money?
Plaid makes money from API usage, enterprise contracts, implementation support, and payment/fraud products sold to fintechs, banks, lenders, and software platforms.
Plaid publishes a self-serve pricing path for developers and custom enterprise pricing for production customers with higher volume, compliance needs, or negotiated bank-connectivity requirements. Usage is generally tied to the products a customer uses, such as account authentication, transaction refreshes, identity checks, income verification, or transfers.
Growth is driven by more connected accounts, higher API call volume, and customers adopting more of the Plaid stack beyond basic bank linking. Large fintechs and enterprises buy Plaid because the alternative is maintaining thousands of financial-institution integrations, consent flows, data normalization, and risk controls themselves.
Sources:Plaid pricingPlaid products
Who leads Plaid?
Plaid is led by co-founder and CEO Zach Perret, with Jean-Denis Greze as CTO and a finance, product, legal, and go-to-market bench built for regulated infrastructure.
- Zach PerretCo-founder and CEOCo-founder - since 2013Public face of Plaid and owner of long-term open-finance strategy.
- Jean-Denis GrezeChief Technology OfficerCTOLeads engineering and platform reliability for Plaid's API network.
- William HockeyCo-founderCo-founderCo-founded Plaid and later stepped back from day-to-day management.
- Jen TaylorPresidentExecutive leadershipRuns operating and go-to-market priorities across Plaid's customer base.
How do you contact Plaid's leadership?
Plaid does not publish verified personal executive inboxes. Use published company channels first; the personal addresses below are format-following only and should be verified before outreach.
first.last@plaid.com (format-following; verify before use)Sources:Plaid contactPlaid press
How much funding has Plaid raised?
Plaid has raised roughly $1.3 billion in disclosed equity and was valued at $8 billion in a February 2026 employee tender.
Plaid's major disclosed rounds include a $2.8 million seed in 2013 led by Spark Capital with Google Ventures and NEA; a $12.5 million Series A in 2014 led by NEA; a $44 million Series B in 2016 led by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners; a $250 million Series C in December 2018 led by Mary Meeker, Index Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz at a $2.65 billion valuation; and a $425 million Series D in April 2021 led by Altimeter at a $13.4 billion valuation.
After Visa's $5.3 billion acquisition agreement was abandoned under DOJ pressure, Plaid stayed private and broadened its product suite. In April 2025 it raised $575 million from Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, BlackRock, NEA, and Ribbit at a $6.1 billion valuation, then completed a February 2026 employee share sale at an $8 billion valuation.
How did Plaid get here?
Plaid grew from a bank-linking API into one of the central infrastructure layers for open finance.
- 2013FoundedZach Perret and William Hockey founded Plaid in San Francisco.
- 2018Series CRaised $250M at a $2.65B valuation.
- 2020Visa deal challengedVisa agreed to buy Plaid for $5.3B before the DOJ sued to block the deal.
- 2021Series DRaised $425M at a $13.4B valuation after the Visa deal ended.
- 2025Valuation resetRaised $575M at a $6.1B valuation.
- 2026Employee tenderCompleted a share sale at an $8B valuation.
Sources:Plaid WikipediaDOJ - Visa/Plaid
Who are Plaid's competitors?
Plaid competes with open-banking aggregators, bank API networks, payment processors, and identity/fraud platforms.
- MXCompetes in financial-data aggregation and money experience APIs with deeper bank-facing software.
- FinicityMastercard-owned open-banking network used by lenders and financial apps.
- YodleeLong-running account aggregation platform with broad wealth and bank coverage.
- TellerDeveloper-focused bank API with a smaller but direct-connect oriented footprint.
- Stripe Financial ConnectionsStripe's embedded bank-account data product for payments and financial workflows.
Plaid — frequently asked questions
