Plaid raises $575M at $6B valuation, down from $13.4B peak, letting employees cash out amid IPO delay

Fintech startup Plaid has raised $575 million in a new funding round that puts its valuation at $6 billion—less than half of its 2021 peak of $13.4 billion.

The new round gives employees a way to cash out their equity, with restricted stock units set to expire at the end of the year. It’s the latest in a string of secondary rounds offering liquidity to staff at high-profile private tech firms that are holding off on going public.

The funding was led by new investors including Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and BlackRock. Longtime backers NEA and Ribbit Capital also joined the round.

Founded in 2012 by William Hockey and Zachary Perret, San Francisco-based Plaid provides the underlying infrastructure that powers much of today’s digital financial system. It enables companies—ranging from scrappy fintech startups to large banks—to build services that let users connect to their financial accounts, share data securely, and manage money more easily. Its APIs are behind well-known apps like Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase.

In an interview with CNBC, Perret said the decade-old startup posted record revenue and reached positive operating margins over the past year. He didn’t share exact numbers but said the new valuation reflects broader market conditions—not a slowdown in the business.

“The reality is our business is much stronger and revenue has grown quite substantially,” Perret told CNBC. “The profitability of business has gotten quite a lot better, and yet we are impacted by market multiples, as many companies are.”

An IPO is still on the table, just not yet.

“An IPO is absolutely on our path for the coming years. We haven’t assigned a specific timeline to it,” Perret said. “We still have a lot of internal work to do. We’re not ready, which is why we didn’t consider it right now.”

This isn’t a unique situation. Companies like Ramp, Databricks, OpenAI, and Stripe have all raised secondary rounds recently, giving some employees a way to sell equity in the private market. Going public hasn’t looked appealing lately, especially with recent IPOs underperforming. Just last week, CoreWeave’s debut flopped, adding to the hesitation.

Perret said, “Volatility is definitely going to be one of the key factors,” when asked about the IPO outlook. The company hasn’t set a timeline.

Plaid has had a rollercoaster run since it launched in 2013. As we reported back in 2o20, Visa was set to acquire the company for $5 billion, but regulators blocked the deal. A year later, Plaid raised at a $13.4 billion valuation during the peak of tech funding before the Fed began hiking interest rates.

The company sits behind many of the apps that consumers use to manage their money. Its APIs connect users’ bank accounts to services like Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase. Over time, it’s expanded into things like bill payments, data analytics, and fraud prevention. It also works with major banks.

Perret said cybersecurity is one of the fastest-growing areas, as AI-fueled financial fraud continues to climb.

“We’ve been leaning in to try to build tools to combat deepfakes and a lot of AI-driven financial fraud,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is a large market opportunity. It’s something that we’d actually like to be smaller. But it’s been an area of growth.”

With IPO windows still murky and investor sentiment shaky, Plaid’s move shows how late-stage startups are recalibrating—offering employees a way to cash out while staying private just a little longer.

Plaid Founders