Welcome to the July installment of Fin Capital's Monthly Wave. It’s been a busy month for the team and our portfolio companies.

• Behind the Helm: Who Really Wins in AI Acquihires? Technology giants are increasingly employing acquihires, acquisitions primarily focused on acquiring talent rather than products or revenue, to expedite the integration of engineering teams and AI specialists. Such transactions often enable companies to circumvent certain regulatory challenges through streamlined and less publicized integrations. However, the Federal Trade Commission and international regulators have begun to examine whether acquihires operate as de facto mergers, particularly when they involve intellectual property and comprehensive team integration. Critics caution that this emerging practice may suppress innovation among startups and further concentrate market power within major technology firms, thereby diminishing competition within the AI sector. While these transactions have yielded benefits for investors and a limited group of engineers, they have concurrently left numerous employees disadvantaged, raising concerns that the prevailing system disproportionately rewards only a select few. There is growing hope that this juncture will catalyze reforms towards more equitable equity arrangements and exit structures, including the adoption of monthly vesting schedules, deal-contingent bonuses, and enhanced transparency to better protect employees. At Fin Capital, we are committed to advising our portfolio companies on navigating these complex exit issues through the M&A advisory provided by our investment and strategy teams - encompassing employee equity & earn-outs, and employee transitions to create more alignment between the acquirer, Founders, employees and shareholders. 

• The Next Watch: Agentic SOCs: Security Operations Centers (SOCs) are crucial for banks because they serve as the frontline defense against cyber threats that could compromise sensitive financial data, disrupt services, or cause significant financial losses. Banks handle vast amounts of confidential customer information and financial transactions, making them prime targets for cyberattacks like fraud, data breaches, ransomware, and insider threats. SOC teams rely on tools that improve workflow efficiency and strengthen essential operations. Agentic AI is instrumental in automating SOC activities, containing threats, and hunting for risks, enabling teams to manage new and complex challenges more effectively. Collectively, these AI agents create an agentic security framework that can prioritize, investigate, and even take action on security alerts and incidents. Rather than merely executing predefined procedures, these agents evaluate situations, make decisions, and act with the judgment of experienced human analysts—handling alerts, performing investigations, and delivering evidence-backed conclusions. At Fin Capital, we actively track innovation in this space and see it as the next frontier of cybersecurity for the global financial sector. As threats grow more sophisticated and persistent, we believe the adoption of agentic AI and intelligent automation will be critical to protecting sensitive data, maintaining trust, and ensuring operational resilience across the industry. 

• Merging Currents: The recent $8.6 billion merger between Pinnacle Financial Partners and Synovus Financial Corp. highlights several key trends shaping the banking industry, especially among regional banks where there has been a trend of consolidation. This strategic union positions the combined entity to capitalize on rapidly growing markets like Atlanta and Nashville while driving synergies on several fronts. The Pinnacle-Synovus deal exemplifies the ongoing consolidation trend in banking, as regional players aim to boost competitiveness through increased scale, geographic expansion, and operational efficiency. At the same time, it underscores the complexities involved in cultural alignment, systems integration/migration, and navigating regulatory challenges inherent in large mergers. To support banks through these challenges, various Fin Capital portfolio companies offer specialized solutions such Entrio for vendor consolidation, Certa for third-party risk management, Mechanical Orchard for mainframe migration, and Unqork for developing low-code APIs, gateways, and microservices. 

• Charting New Waters in Open Banking: Unless you've been completely off the grid, you’ve likely heard that JPMorgan Chase has introduced a new pricing structure for API aggregators. The bank claims these intermediaries are overwhelming its systems with excessive data requests. Of the 1.89 billion requests received, only 13% were actually initiated by customers for transactional purposes. The majority were made for other reasons—such as enabling fintechs to improve their products, prevent fraud, or even extract data for resale. JPMorgan argues that, given the significant capital and resources it has invested in maintaining secure data-sharing infrastructure, it should be able to recover some of those costs. While that’s a valid perspective, much of the press coverage on the topic misses a critical point: existing regulations have not meaningfully addressed liability. There needs to be stronger incentives for the responsible parties to fix the root causes driving elevated fraud risks in the first place. That’s exactly why we recently invested in Invela Network—a first-of-its-kind platform that governs the exchange of financial data within open banking ecosystems. It enables near-real-time participant vetting, ongoing risk management, and system-wide intelligence. To learn more about Invela, feel free to reach out to [email protected]. 

SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund Announcement

Fin Capital is excited to announce our partnership with SMBC Group on the launch of the SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, a $300 million initiative focused on investing in leading U.S. financial technology startups.

This marks the beginning of SMBC Group’s corporate venture capital activities in the U.S., with a mission to drive innovation and operational transformation across the organization. In collaboration with SMBC Americas and other SMBC Group companies, the fund will serve as a strategic bridge—connecting startups, entrepreneurs, investors, and academic institutions with one of the world’s leading financial institutions.  

Allocate Podcast Featuring Logan Allin!

New GTM Navigator

Tune in to our latest episode, Nailing Your Discovery Calls, with Fin Capital Associate, Lauren Houpt, and Jonathan Geller, Founder of Glider, as they dive into how to run high-impact discovery calls. Jonathan shares actionable insights and proven strategies to help early-stage founders master this critical step in the sales process.

We hope this conversation helps you refine your approach and drive stronger customer engagement from the very first touchpoint. 

The 2025 SaaS Benchmark Survey by High Alpha

This year, our friends at High Alpha are conducting a survey that covers tried-and-true SaaS metrics and emerging trends like AI adoption, monetization, operations, and the changing fundraising environment. Take the survey and get early access to the benchmarks!

Events

• September 8-10: Finovate Fall 

  • Will you be in NYC for Finovate Fall? We’d love to see you! Reach out to [email protected] to set up a time to connect. 

Portfolio News

It’s been a busy month, sharing some of the latest moments from across portfolio…

• Carefull launches LegacyKit, a secure digital solution that will automatically collect essential financial information & empower next-generation relationships.  

• Circle announces partnership with FIS to unlock stablecoin money movement functionality for financial institutions.  

• Dailypay announces partnership with Sailormen, Inc., the QSR operator of 130+ Popeyes franchises, which will allow employees to access their pay as early as the end of their shift.   

• FairPlay and Taktile publish a joint study on how lenders can build more inclusive risk models.  

• FiVerity launches AI-Powered Joint Investigations, which enables institutions to voluntarily collaborate on suspicious activity, improve SAR quality, enable “super SARs,” and accelerate illicit network detection. 

• Greenlight announces integration with Q2’s digital banking platform, which will provide financial institution account holders access to Greenlight’s financial literacy tools. 

• Kard announces partnership with Fetch to unlock more offers for consumers & reach new brands. 

• Luminary was recently featured in Family Wealth Report's Acclaim Magazine 2025. 

• SumUp launches SumUp Terminal, an all-in-one point of sale device that combines a card reader, full POS, ordering system, and receipt printer into a single standalone device. 

• Talos acquires Coin Metrics, which will enable their goal to become a one-stop shop for institutional players looking to get into digital asset trading. 

• Thoropass and YASH Technologies announce strategic partnership to deliver compliance automation solutions to streamline audit processes.  

• Trovata acquires ATOM, which will enable full treasury management capabilities, a step to redefine corporate treasury. 

• Vestwell launches Solo 401(k), a retirement plan tailored for people who run an independent business, in partnership with JPMorgan. 

What We’re Reading

INDUSTRY RESEARCH 

• ICONIQ Capital: The State of Go-to-Market in 2025 (Read More) 

BLOGS, PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 

• Poolside: The Hidden Engineering Behind Foundation Model Building (Read More) 

• Fairplay: Model Validation Field Guide, A Practical Handbook for High-Risk Model Review (Read More) 

• Rebank Podcast: The Current and Future State of Stablecoin Payments with Conduit (Listen Here) 

• Elad Blog: AI Market Clarity (Read More) 

• OnlyCFO’s Newsletter: Equity Comp – Be Transparent or Secretive? (Read More) 

• Figure: How to (Really) Get Equities on Blockchain (Read More) 

• The Signal Club: How to Scale GTM with AI & Automation, Instead of Headcount (Read More) 

• OpenYield: Markets Podcast (Listen Here) 

• Insight Partners: Selling AI to Enterprise Buyers (Read More) 

• Founder Catalyst: Tokenomics #1: The Pricing Evolution of AI Coding Agents (Read More) 

Thanks for reading!

We are grateful for your partnership and support, and welcome any feedback you have. We’ll see you next month with more!

-The Fin Capital team

_Disclaimer

_{This material is provided for informational purposes, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Fin Venture Capital Management LLC (“Fin”) or its affiliates. Content obtained from third-party sources, although believed to be reliable, has not been independently verified as to its accuracy or completeness and cannot be guaranteed. Fin has no obligation to update, modify or amend the content of this post nor notify its readers in the event that any information, opinion, projection, forecast or estimate included, changes or subsequently becomes inaccurate.}