• Robinhood Ventures Fund I made early investments in Stripe and ElevenLabs, expanding its portfolio of private fintech and AI companies.
• The fund, which began trading earlier this month on the New York Stock Exchange, gives retail investors access to private market opportunities traditionally reserved for institutional and accredited investors.
• As part of its push to become a financial super app, Robinhood is building infrastructure to package and distribute private assets.

Robinhood Ventures’ first fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund I (RVI), announced it has closed investments in Stripe and ElevenLabs, just days after the fund began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RVI.

Last week, RVI purchased $14.6 million of Class B common stock of Stripe in secondary transactions, and days later bought $20 million of Series D preferred stock of ElevenLabs in a primary transaction. Founded in 2010, Stripe enables businesses to accept payments, manage billing, and embed financial services into digital platforms. UK-based ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company focused on audio, voice, and realistic speech.

Robinhood launched Robinhood Ventures to enable its users to invest in private companies. The portfolio now includes Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Mercor, Oura, Ramp, Revolut, and Stripe. Robinhood plans to add more private companies in the future.

“We’re excited to add Stripe and ElevenLabs to Robinhood Ventures Fund I and are proud to offer retail investors access to these frontier companies,” said Robinhood Ventures Fund I President Sarah Pinto. “They are helping shape the future of fintech and AI, and reflect RVI’s focus on investing in innovative companies operating at the forefront of their industries.”

In an era when valuable tech companies are staying private for longer, it is difficult for everyday investors to tap into that value. Instead, access has traditionally been limited to wealthy and institutional investors. But because Robinhood doesn’t require investors to be accredited or charge performance fees like traditional venture funds do, a wider variety of investors are able to participate.

Expanding its investment infrastructure is a key piece for Robinhood, which has recently disclosed its goal of becoming a financial super app. The California-based company is offering more than just investment access. It is building the rails to package, price, and distribute traditionally illiquid assets to everyday investors. If this infrastructure model proves successful, Robinhood could expand beyond venture equity into other private market categories such as credit, real estate, and tokenized assets.

Photo by Magda Ehlers

• Varo raised $123.9 million in a Series G round led by Warburg Pincus and Coliseum Capital.
• The bank will use the investment to scale its chartered banking and lending platform.
• Alice Milligan, former chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley, and Kevin Watters, former division chief executive officer at JPMorgan, have joined Varo’s Board of Directors.

Digital challenger bank Varo landed $123.9 million in financing this week. The Series G round, which boosts Varo’s total funding to $1.1 billion, was led by existing investor Warburg Pincus and new investor Coliseum Capital Management. Also contributing to today’s investment are existing investors such as Northview.

For new investor Coliseum Capital Management, the appeal lies in Varo’s ability to use its charter to compete with incumbent banks while expanding its product depth. “We are thrilled to join Warburg Pincus as long-term, collaborative partners, and support Varo’s work to expand its customer value proposition and to further differentiate from traditional banks,” said Coliseum Capital Management co-founder and Managing Partner Chris Shackelton. “We believe Varo is building a resilient and scalable platform from which to capitalize on a significant market share opportunity.”

Varo was founded in 2017 and secured a bank charter three years later. The fintech’s banking platform brings digital-first bank tools, from money management to lending, credit building, and savings accounts and tools. Varo offers two lending products, Varo Advance and Varo Line of Credit, which together generated $547 million in volume last year. The bank’s lending tools are powered by the company’s machine learning models that supplement traditional credit data, allowing the bank to lend to non-traditional borrowers.

As part of today’s announcement, Varo disclosed that Alice Milligan, former chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley, and Kevin Watters, former division chief executive officer at JPMorgan, have joined its Board of Directors.

From a governance and operating perspective, Varo’s board sees the company’s combination of regulated banking discipline and modern technology as a key differentiator in a crowded challenger market. “Varo has built something rare: a technology-first customer experience paired with the governance and risk discipline required of a nationally chartered bank,” said Varo Bank Board of Directors Alice Milligan and Kevin Watters. Watters reports that Varo will use today’s funds to support the company’s next phase of growth by scaling its lending and banking platform.

“This combination of new capital, Coliseum’s partnership, and experienced banking leaders joining our board, is propelling Varo into its next phase of growth,” said Varo Bank CEO Gavin Michael. “We remain focused on operating with discipline and delivering meaningful impact for our customers.”

US-based Varo is one of the few true challenger banks that operate with their own bank charter, a structural advantage that gives it direct control over deposits, lending, customers, and unit economics. But a charter alone does not guarantee scale. Varo is still small when compared to competitors such as Chime, which operates under a sponsor banking model and has tens of millions of users. And while SoFi is Varo’s closest chartered competitor, the gap between the two is widening. SoFi recently reported record Q4 2025 results, including $1 billion in net revenue, $174 million in net income, and one million new members added in a single quarter.

As bank charters increasingly become table stakes in the challenger banking field, Varo will need to focus on scaling by differentiating its offerings and channels to reach new markets, especially as international players like Nubank, which just received regulatory approval to operate in the US, bring their customer-winning strategies to the US.

Photo by Landiva Weber

• Sokin raised $50 million in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $96 million and boosting its valuation to $300 million following 100% year-over-year revenue growth.
• The fintech offers global payments, multi-currency accounts, and treasury tools across 170+ countries, positioning itself as a fast-scaling competitor in the $56 trillion cross-border payments market.
• Investors see Sokin as part of a new wave of infrastructure-focused payments challengers aiming to solve cross-border complexity at a global scale.

Global payments fintech Sokin raised $50 million in Series B funding this week. The round boosts the UK-based company’s total raised to $96 million since it was founded in 2019.

Today’s investment was led by Prysm Capital with additional contributions from Watershed Ventures and existing investors including investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Aurum Partners, Gary Marino, former Chief Commercial Officer at PayPal, and Mark Britto, former Chief Product Officer at PayPal. 

With the new round, Sokin’s valuation has increased to $300 million. Prysm said that it invested in Sokin because of its “rapid and profitable growth” in the global business payments market, a subsector that is projected to see $56 trillion in transaction volume by 2030. The company’s revenues have increased by 8x since 2022, rising 100% year-over-year since then.

“Sokin is at a transformative stage, having demonstrated impressive year-on-year business growth,” said Prysm Capital Co-founder and partner Muhammad Mian. “The company is perfectly positioned to become the definitive leader in cross-border payments. Critically, Sokin has already built the infrastructure to capitalize on what we see as a huge addressable market.”

Sokin’s platform brings together global payments, payment acceptance, and treasury management tools to support businesses operating across borders. The company provides access to more than 70 currencies and enables customers to hold 26 currencies in multi-currency accounts, facilitating transactions in over 170 countries.

“We’ve spent the past six years building a comprehensive financial infrastructure that makes global business faster and more efficient,” said ‍Sokin CEO and Founder Vroon Modgill. “For too long, payments, treasury management, and international accounts have been fragmented and outdated. We’ve built the platform that brings it all together, and this funding lets us accelerate that vision globally.”

In the next year, Sokin will continue to build out its global infrastructure across Asia, the Middle East, and South America, including securing additional regional licenses and banking partnerships. Sokin will also invest in its platform and embedded solutions to expand its accounts payable and receivable capabilities.

This funding round positions Sokin on a growing list of challengers building global payments infrastructure, competing not just with banks but also with new providers like Airwallex, Nium, and Rapyd. Investor appetite for these organizations shows that the winners in this new era of payments will be those that solve cross-border complexity at the infrastructure level, not just through front-end interfaces. If Sokin can turn its rapid revenue growth into market share, it may emerge as a key operator in the growing cross-border payments market.

Photo by Pixabay

• Ramp raised $300 million at a $32 billion valuation, bringing its total funding raised to $2.3 billion.
• The company surpassed $1 billion in annualized revenue, doubled customers year-over-year, and is scaling AI-driven automation across its platform.
• Ramp is evolving from a corporate card provider into a more holistic finance operations engine, which raises the bar for value creation in corporate spend management.

Corporate card and expense management platform Ramp is unveiling an updated valuation this week after a new funding round. The New York-based company closed $300 million in funding, boosting its valuation to $32 billion and bringing its total raised to $2.3 billion in equity.

The investment was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with continued support from existing investors Founders Fund, D1 Capital Partners, Coatue, GIC, Avenir Growth, Thrive Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Khosla Ventures, ICONIQ, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Soma Capital, Emerson Collective, 8VC, Lux Capital, Definition Capital, 137 Ventures, General Catalyst, Box Group, Kultura Capital, Pinegrove Venture Partners, Anti Fund, and Stripes. New investors, including Alpha Wave Global, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, 1789 Capital, Epicenter Capital, and Coral Capital also participated.

Ramp’s all-in-one solution offers corporate cards with expense management, bill payments, procurement, travel booking, treasury, and automated bookkeeping to help organizations save time, reduce costs, and focus on their core competencies. Ramp was founded in 2019 and has since experienced notable growth. As of November 1, the company has:

• Generated more than $1 billion in annualized revenue
• Served over 50,000 customers, doubling the number year-over-year
• Grown its enterprise customer base by 133% year-over-year, with over 2,200 customers contributing $100,000 or more in annualized revenue.

This growth comes shortly after a busy year of development for Ramp. In January, the company launched Ramp Treasury to hold users’ cash deposits in partnership with First Internet Bank of Indiana. Later in the year, Ramp unveiled multiple Agentic AI solutions, including Agents for Controllers and Agents for AP.

It is clear that Ramp isn’t using Agentic AI simply because it is a buzzword. In October alone, the company’s AI made 26,146,619 decisions across over $10 billion in spend.

These adoption metrics, paired with Ramp’s accelerating AI-powered automation, underscore how the company is positioning its platform as a growth and efficiency engine rather than a traditional spend-control tool. According to Ramp CEO and Co-founder Eric Glyman, “Our goal is to make every customer more profitable. On average, companies that switch to Ramp spend 5% less and grow 12% faster—results that outpace nearly every benchmark. The most disciplined and fastest-growing teams choose Ramp because it helps them scale more efficiently. We are working hard to bring that advantage to every business.”

Ramp’s upward trajectory shows that corporate card fintechs are now competing on more than simply card issuance. In order to win in this space, fintechs must create value beyond cards and expense management to materially improve operational outcomes throughout a client’s organization. As procurement, treasury, travel, and automated accounting converge, Ramp is staking its claim as a leader in the space while raising competitive pressure on both incumbents and newer players alike.

Photo by nappy