For fintech startups, the first five years of the decade have been a roller-coaster ride. At the outset, companies were awash in easy money, then a harsh funding winter befell them, causing numerous startups to fold. Last year, the industry stabilized and is now looking mature relative to the current funding frenzy around AI and prediction markets. Venture capital investment for private fintechs increased by 35% to $53 billion in 2025, marking the first gain in four years, though that sum remains well below the $152 billion raised in 2021, according to CB Insights.
AI companies continue to monopolize venture capitalists’ attention–they sucked up $226 billion in funding last year, or nearly $1 out of every $2 dollars of venture investment. Fintech is no longer a Silicon Valley darling, and this shift has created a wide dispersion in valuations.
Publicly traded industry stalwarts like Block, PayPal and Coinbase saw their stocks fall 10%-plus in 2025. Robinhood’s surged nearly 200%. Five formerly private companies that made our Fintech 50 a year ago went public over the past 12 months, including digital bank Chime, life insurer Ethos, home equity lender Figure, travel and expense company Navan and robo-advisor Wealthfront. Four out of those five are trading below their IPO prices.
Our new 2026 Fintech 50 list is brimming with entrepreneurs who have found ways to thrive in this sober, unforgiving environment.
(You can see the full Fintech 50 2026 list here.)
For the past two years, fintechs that serve other businesses–especially those that fall under our Business-to-Business Banking and Wall Street and Enterprise categories–did particularly well, taking 20 of the total 50 spots on our 11th annual list.
Business-to-Business Banking startups claimed the most members of any category with 11, nearly all returning Fintech 50 list-makers from prior years. Column, an FDIC-insured bank led by Plaid cofounder William Hockey, made our list for the third year as it doubled its revenue in 2025 to more than $200 million. Mercury, which offers everything from business checking accounts to working capital loans, saw its revenue hit $650 million as the company achieved its third straight year of profitability and made the Fintech 50 for the fourth time. Corporate credit card startup Ramp saw its valuation jump to $32 billion in November 2025 after receiving a valuation of $22.5 billion in July. This is its sixth year on Forbes’ Fintech 50.
Startups that make software for Wall Street firms thrived too, with several making their Fintech 50 debut. With the help of AI, Virginia-based Antithesis stress-tests every inch of a software program for bugs, helping trading firms avoid errors that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Quant powerhouse Jane Street became an Antithesis customer in January 2025 and in December led the startup’s $105 million Series A funding round. New York-based Maybern automates the messy accounting that plagues private-market funds. Its 20-plus customers include real estate and private equity funds such as Gauge Capital and Madison Realty Capital that collectively manage $80 billion.
Personal finance companies took eight spots on our list. One newcomer is budgeting app Monarch. After Intuit shut down Mint in 2024, Monarch became a popular alternative, offering features like goal setting, category budgeting and an AI assistant. It has more than 500,000 paying subscribers and raised funding at an $850 million valuation last year. Another winner, Possible Finance, provides loans of $50 to $500 primarily to low-income consumers in 33 states. It tries to be a more flexible alternative to payday loans, letting consumers split payments into multiple installments and reschedule them up to 29 days from the original date. Since its 2017 founding, Possible Finance has loaned more than $1.75 billion to 1.5 million people.
While publicly traded payments companies had a bruising 2025, with many stocks like PayPal declining double-digit percentages, some private payments startups decelerated too. Only seven made our list this year versus 11 a year ago. One that bucked the trend and made its Fintech 50 debut was Rain, which helps companies move, store and use cryptocurrency-based stablecoins. Rain recently saw its valuation triple in five months, reaching $1.95 billion in January 2026. Payments giant Stripe saw its valuation hit its highest level ever last year, at $107 billion, and made our list for its 11th year.
Both crypto and insurance startups had a stronger showing in 2025 than 2024, with each group claiming five spots on this year’s list. Seven of those ten winners were Fintech 50 first-timers, such as Hyperliquid, the decentralized trading exchange that captured about 80% of the perpetual futures market, crypto traders’ preferred financial product for highly leveraged speculation. Less than two years after launching, Hyperliquid brought in an eye-popping $844 million in revenue on $2.95 trillion in trading volume. Another honoree is six-year-old insurtech startup Nayya. It feeds data about employees’ health and finances into its AI-driven software to help people pick the most cost-effective medical and supplemental insurance plans, file claims and manage their 401(k)s and personal finances.
Real estate once again made up the smallest category on our list, taking just two spots. Its small footprint reflects broader industry challenges including struggling areas of commercial real estate, like offices, and a shortage of inventory plaguing the housing market.
As the AI wave sweeps across nearly every sector, fintech companies have been slower to adopt the technology than many other tech startups, partly due to the high-stakes nature of financial transactions and strict regulations. But those that have are reaping the benefits. Three AI-native fintech startups made the Fintech 50 for their first time this year. One was Rillet, which is racing to build AI enterprise accounting and finance systems that can compete with legacy products like Oracle’s NetSuite. Another is Reserv, which uses AI to help insurers more quickly process claims, consolidating a company’s claim files into one place so adjusters can easily query them. The third is Rogo, which uses AI to speed up investment bankers’ grunt work.
Prediction-markets leaders Polymarket and Kalshi made the Fintech 50 for the first time this year, too.
Two companies on our Fintech 50 2026 are returning after previously dropping off. One is Socure, a fraud-prevention and identity-verification company, which had last made the cut in 2021. It has more than 3,000 customers including Capital One, Citi and Uber, and in 2025, its revenue increased 43% to $200 million, with $18.5 million in net profit. Small business lender Fundbox last made the Fintech 50 in 2016. Nine years later, it has served 150,000 small businesses and issued $6 billion in loans since opening its doors. In 2025, Fundbox’s revenue reached $110 million, up from $78 million in 2024.
To select the members of Forbes’ Fintech 50 2026, our team of eight reporters and editors analyzed hundreds of companies, evaluating everything from business growth and product innovation to leadership team diversity. We interviewed both CEOs and industry insiders. To be considered, startups need to have their headquarters or substantial operations in the U.S. and not be part of a public company.
With additional reporting from Sophia Acevedo, Nina Bambysheva, Martina Castellanos, Brandon Kochkodin, Hank Tucker and Francesca Walton.
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