Plaid company profile: valuation, funding & revenue

This Plaid company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. Plaid works in fintech infrastructure, with a focus on financial data and open banking. It was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. Its latest valuation on record is US$8 billion (employee liquidity round) (February 2026). Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.

Revenue

Funding history

Plaid timeline

Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.

• 2013 — Plaid is founded in San Francisco by Zach Perret (CEO) and William Hockey.
• Apr 2025 — Common stock round: US$575M, valuing the company at US$6.1B. Investors: Franklin Templeton (lead); Fidelity, BlackRock, Ribbit Capital, NEA.
• February 2026 — Later tender offer: Reported employee tender at about US$8 billion.
• 2021 — Peak valuation: US$13.4 billion.

Investors

Overview

Plaid connects people's bank accounts to the financial apps they use. When you link a bank account to a budgeting app, an investing app, a payments service or a lender, there's a good chance Plaid is the connection in the background. It verifies accounts, retrieves balances and transactions with the user's permission, and increasingly helps move money and assess credit and fraud risk. Thousands of fintechs and financial institutions rely on it, making it one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in US consumer finance.

Zach Perret, the CEO, and William Hockey founded Plaid in 2013. It's a US counterpart to companies like Flinks in Canada.

How Plaid makes money

Plaid charges the companies that use its services, typically per connected account, per request or per verification, depending on the product. Core products include account linking, identity verification, income and employment verification, payments and fraud prevention. As it has expanded beyond basic data connections into payments, credit data and fraud tools, it has broadened its revenue base and reduced its dependence on any single use case.

Funding history

Plaid was one of the most valuable fintech infrastructure companies during the 2021 boom, reaching a valuation of US$13.4 billion. Before that, a planned acquisition by Visa, announced in early 2020, was called off after the US Department of Justice challenged it on competition grounds.

April 2025: Plaid raised US$575 million at a US$6.1 billion valuation, led by Franklin Templeton, with Fidelity, BlackRock, Ribbit Capital and NEA. It was described as an oversubscribed common stock round. Much of the money was earmarked to cover employees' tax obligations on expiring restricted stock and to provide limited liquidity, rather than to fund an imminent IPO. The company said it wouldn't go public in 2025.

CEO Zach Perret attributed the lower valuation to market conditions, especially lower fintech valuation multiples in a higher-interest-rate environment, rather than weaker business performance, saying revenue and profitability had improved significantly.

February 2026: reports described an employee tender offer at about US$8 billion, around 30% above the 2025 round. We list it in the metrics above as a reported figure, since it was a secondary transaction rather than a primary round.

Why the valuation fell, and what it means

Plaid's drop from US$13.4 billion to US$6.1 billion is a textbook example of how market multiples, not just company performance, drive private valuations. In 2021, investors paid very high multiples of revenue for fintech growth. When interest rates rose, those multiples compressed sharply across public and private markets. A company can grow its revenue and still raise at a lower valuation if the multiple investors are willing to pay falls faster. Our guide to down rounds explains the effects on shareholders.

The common stock structure of the 2025 round is also notable. Most venture rounds sell preferred shares with liquidation preferences. Selling common stock is simpler and can be a way to provide liquidity and solve employee tax issues, but it's less common.

Revenue: what's public

Plaid hasn't published its revenue in the sources we reviewed. Some data sites list figures, but at least one appears to be an error, matching the size of the funding round, so we don't repeat them. Reports indicate revenue grew about 25% in 2024, and the CEO has said profitability improved significantly.

Open banking regulation

Plaid's business is closely tied to how regulators treat consumer financial data. In the US, rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on personal financial data rights aim to give consumers the right to share their data with third parties through secure connections. How those rules are implemented, including whether banks can charge for data access, directly affects companies like Plaid. Regulatory developments in this area have been changing, so check current status if you're relying on them.

Competitive landscape

Plaid competes with other financial data aggregators, payment networks building their own data services, banks' direct connections with fintechs, and identity and fraud specialists. Its advantages are its large network of connected institutions and fintech customers, its brand among developers, and its expanding product range. Its risks include regulatory changes, banks charging for data access, and competition from card networks.

What to watch next

Watch for IPO plans, growth in payments and fraud products, US open banking rule developments, and the next valuation event. If the reported US$8 billion tender is confirmed, it would suggest market sentiment towards fintech infrastructure has improved since 2025.

Key facts at a glance

Plaid is a San Francisco financial data network founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey. It peaked at a US$13.4 billion valuation in 2021, and in April 2025 raised US$575 million in common stock at a US$6.1 billion valuation, led by Franklin Templeton with Fidelity, BlackRock, Ribbit Capital and NEA, largely to cover employee tax obligations and provide liquidity. A February 2026 employee tender was reported at about US$8 billion.

How bank account linking works for users

From a user's point of view, linking a bank through Plaid usually takes a minute: choose your bank in the app, log in through a secure window or the bank's own approval screen, select which accounts to share, and confirm. Increasingly, connections use banks' official APIs rather than shared passwords, so the app never sees your bank credentials and you can revoke access later through your bank or Plaid's privacy portal. Users who are cautious about sharing data should check what each app requests and remove connections they no longer use. That habit protects you regardless of which data provider an app relies on.

For businesses, the same principle applies to vendors that access financial data: review which providers hold connections, why, and whether their access is still needed, at least once a year.

Removing unused connections reduces the number of places your financial data can be exposed if any provider suffers a breach.

It is a simple, worthwhile habit.

What this means if you're…

Building a fintech: compare data providers on institution coverage, connection reliability, pricing at scale and readiness for open banking rules.

A startup employee with RSUs: Plaid's round shows how expiring restricted stock can create tax problems at private companies, and how companies sometimes raise money to solve them.

An investor: Plaid illustrates how much of a private valuation depends on market multiples rather than company performance alone.

Latest developments (October 2026)

Plaid completed an employee liquidity round in February 2026 at an US$8 billion valuation, up from US$6.1 billion in April 2025, according to Techleap, and Bloomberg reported it had held preliminary talks with banks about a US IPO, according to The Paypers. Chief executive Zach Perret has said the company was not yet ready to list. This supersedes the 2025 valuation described earlier on this page.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.

1. Techleap
2. FinTech Futures
3. FinTech Global
4. Fortune