Fintech Highlights - 9/22/2026

Here's what we've been reading this week....

Pinned to the Top

Half of BNY employees are building their own AI agents

Bank of New York (BNY) is encouraging employees to build and deploy agentic systems — described as “digital employees” — that can autonomously perform tasks alongside human workers and provide decision support. 

Product relevance: this may be one of the more important AI signals we've seen from a major financial institution. BNY isn't just deploying centrally managed AI tools; it's turning employees themselves into builders and beginning to reorganize work around agents. Read more

AI Moves Into the Financial-Services Workflow

• Footprint raises $25 million to build AI agents for financial-crime investigations. QED Investors led the Series B, with MUFG, Commerce Ventures and others participating. Product relevance: instead of applying AI primarily to customer service or employee productivity, Footprint is targeting a labor-intensive, highly regulated workflow where financial institutions spend significant resources. It's a strong example of agents moving into consequential bank operations. Read more
• Baselayer raises $35 million for bank fraud detection. Baselayer provides fraud-detection technology to banks and other financial institutions. Product relevance: fraud is quickly becoming an AI-vs.-AI problem: institutions are using better models and automation at the same time fraudsters are adopting AI to make attacks more sophisticated. That makes fraud detection one of the clearest financial-services use cases for increasingly intelligent systems. Read more
• Go.AI raises $85 million to bring AI hardware into banks. The Chicago company sells AI hardware appliances specifically to banks. Product relevance: this is an interesting counterpoint to cloud-first AI strategies. Financial institutions concerned about data residency, security, latency and control may increasingly look at infrastructure that lets them run sensitive AI workloads inside tightly controlled environments. Read more
• Solifi acquires Inovatec to add AI-native technology to auto finance. Solifi's acquisition of cloud-based lending fintech Inovatec Systems is intended to accelerate its auto-lending business, with Inovatec's AI-native platform playing a central role. Product relevance: AI is becoming an M&A capability, not simply a feature roadmap. Solifi is effectively buying technology and infrastructure to accelerate its lending-product strategy. Read more

Lending + Payments

• Grab completes its $1.49 billion Atome acquisition. Grab agreed to acquire a majority stake in buy-now-pay-later provider Atome for $1.49 billion in cash. Product relevance: payments, commerce and consumer lending continue to collapse into the same product ecosystem. Grab now has the opportunity to embed Atome credit throughout existing consumer and merchant experiences rather than treating lending as a separate product. Read more
• Sela raises $21 million for AI voice agents that sell mortgages. Sela provides voice agents designed to automate mortgage sales calls. Product relevance: this is a notable example of generative AI moving directly into mortgage origination and customer acquisition — not merely supporting employees behind the scenes, but participating in the actual sales experience. Read more

Banking Infrastructure

• Vista explores a sale of Finastra. Vista Equity Partners reportedly hired Morgan Stanley to find a buyer for Finastra, one of the major software providers serving banks and financial institutions. Product relevance: Finastra sits deep inside bank infrastructure. A change in ownership could eventually influence investment priorities, modernization strategy, partnerships and product roadmaps across a large financial-institution customer base. Read more
• BlackLine acquires B2B onboarding and credit-risk startup NetNow. NetNow focuses on B2B customer onboarding and credit-risk management. Product relevance: onboarding and credit decisioning are increasingly becoming connected workflows, creating opportunities to combine identity, business data, risk assessment and account setup into a more seamless commercial-finance experience. Read more
• ETFBook raises $13 million for ETF data and analytics. Expedition Growth Capital led the investment, with BlackFin Capital Partners participating. Product relevance: ETF infrastructure gets less attention than consumer investing apps, but data and analytics are becoming increasingly important as asset managers and wealth platforms manage an expanding universe of ETF products. Read more

Insurance + Benefits

• Adlib Software acquires agentic-AI insurance platform Paperbox. Adlib agreed to acquire the Belgian company, which is building agentic AI specifically for insurance. Product relevance: insurers are beginning to move beyond copilots that simply assist employees toward systems designed to execute portions of insurance workflows themselves. Read more
• Rebuild raises $13 million for insurance-claims software. The company develops software for restoration contractors working insurance claims. Product relevance: rather than reinventing insurance itself, Rebuild is attacking the messy operational layer between carriers, claims and contractors — exactly the sort of vertical workflow where better digital experiences and automation can have an outsized impact. Read more
• Thatch raises $108 million at a $1 billion valuation. The health-benefits company raised a Series C backed by The General Partnership, Index Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, General Catalyst and a16z. Product relevance:employer health benefits remain an enormous financial-services workflow where fintech-like platforms can reshape how employers fund benefits and employees access coverage. Read more

One thing we're watching

The common thread this week isn't simply that financial institutions are “using AI.”

The more interesting shift is where AI is showing up.

Employees at BNY are building their own agents. Footprint is putting agents into financial-crime investigations. Baselayer is attacking fraud. Sela is putting voice AI into mortgage sales. Paperbox is bringing agents into insurance workflows. And Solifi is acquiring AI-native technology to accelerate its lending strategy.

We're moving from AI as a feature toward AI as part of the operating model.

That's a much bigger change.