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Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
Earlier this month, 42 companies took the stage at FinovateSpring in San Diego, showcasing their latest and greatest fintech solutions. Now, it’s your turn to experience the action. The demo videos from the event are live! So, whether you joined us in person or missed the event, you can now watch every presentation on demand, for free.
The best way to dive into the 42 videos, which total nearly five hours of content, is to watch the six Best of Show videos from the conference.
Thanks to all of the demo companies for making this a fantastic event! You won’t want to miss our next event, FinovateFall, which is taking place September 8 through 10 in New York. The earlier you register, the more you save.
AI-powered sales technology provider Solda.AI has raised $4 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Accel and included participation from AltaIR Capital.
Solda.AI won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, California.
Solda.AI, an innovator in AI sales for fintech that won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last week, has announced $4 million in new funding. The seed round was led by Accel and featured participation from AltaIR Capital. The company will use the capital to further develop its fleet of AI agents, forge partnerships with more businesses around the world, and continue to transform international sales processes.
“At Solda.AI, we believe that the future of telesales is AI,” Solda.AI CEO and Co-Founder Sergey Shalaev said. “Our vision is for voice agent-powered sales that generate revenue and provide real ROI, and we believe that we’re the first and only company to deliver this. We have already seamlessly integrated our agents into 20 partners’ sales channels, and are delighted to announce this seed funding led by Accel to help us collaborate with more businesses and take phone sales into the age of AI.”
Solda.AI offers fully autonomous, AI-powered voice agents that can operate a business’s entire telesales cycle at scale, processing 10,000 leads a day to make sales calls, follow-up calls, return calls, and close deals. The agents can engage leads after two weeks of sales call and script training, which compares favorably with human call center agents, only 10% of whom achieve proficiency in less than two months.
Solda.AI’s agents have a 1% AI detection rate and, at peak hours, can manage 100 phone lines simultaneously. The agents are multilingual, and can currently conduct sales-based conversations in both US and UK English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The agents can even distinguish between European and Latin American versions of Spanish (as spoken in Mexico, for example) and Portuguese (as spoken in Brazil). Companies deploying Solda.AI’s technology have benefited from a 30% cost efficiency gain compared to call centers. Solda.AI reports that its agents generated $7 million in incremental revenue for clients last year and are on target to deliver $30 million in 2025.
“When we first met Sergey and the Solda.AI team, we were blown away by the AI voice agents’ human-like attributes and ability to not only handle complex conversations, but also close deals on the spot,” Accel partner Zhenya Loginov said. “Solda.AI’s technology has the potential to completely revolutionize the telesales market, with the team using AI to redefine sales automation from scratch.”
Headquartered in Middletown, Delaware, Solda.AI demoed its technology at FinovateSpring 2025 in May, winning Best of Show. At the conference, the company showed how its AI sales agents automate the sales process while delivering human-like, personalized, on-brand interactions that produce conversion rates up to twice those of traditional methods. Solda.AI’s technology helps fintechs and banks automate onboarding, upsell, KYC, and retention calls with less than 1% AI detection at 60% of the cost.
As I write this, Finovate’s first fintech conference in San Diego has one more day of content left. But if the first two days of FinovateSpring 2025 are any indication, it’s already a good bet that we will be back.
From the California-based fintechs that made the short trip south to innovative startups that traveled from as far away as New Zealand, FinovateSpring 2025 featured a diverse and exciting range of fintech innovations designed to solve pain points for banks, credit unions, and financial services providers, as well as for their customers and members.
Whether leveraging AI to create efficiencies and automate workflows or putting embedded finance to work improving lending for small businesses, our demoing companies continue to represent the cutting edge of what’s new, what’s novel, and what works.
With this in mind, here are the winners of Best of Show for FinovateSpring 2025.
Bits of Stock for its solution that gathers deposits and drives non-interest income by helping financial institutions stay top of mind and top of wallet with the next generation of investors.
Finalytics.ai for its technology that enables financial institutions to instantly unleash the power of AI by offering digital experiences informed by behavioral, transactional, and third-party data.
Herd Security for its technology that gives financial organizations visibility and protection from voice fraud.
Illuma for its innovations in deepfake detection that enable community financial institutions to keep their members and customers connected with their funds in a convenient and secure manner.
Penny Finance for its solution that connects the dots between an FI’s products and services and a member’s needs, all while creating efficiency for their marketing organizations.
Solda.ai for its technology that enables businesses to better engage their customers with instant scalability.
Thanks to our demoing companies, our sponsors, speakers, and delegates for making our first fintech conference in San Diego such a success.
Next up on the Finovate tour is FinovateFall 2025, September 8-10, at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, New York. Find out more about the conference at our FinovateFall hub and we look forward to seeing you in “The City That Never Sleeps”.
Notes on methodology:
1. Only audience members NOT associated with demoing companies were eligible to vote. Finovate employees did not vote.
2. Attendees were encouraged to note their favorites during each day. At the end of the last demo, they chose their three favorites.
3. The exact written instructions given to attendees: “Please rate (the companies) on the basis of demo quality and potential impact of the innovation demoed.”
4. The six companies appearing on the highest percentage of submitted ballots were named “Best of Show.”
5. Go here for a list of previous Best of Show winners through 2014. Best of Show winners from our 2015 through 2025 conferences are below:
A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Diego on May 7 – 9. Register today using this link and save 20%.
Bits of Stock
Bits of Stock empowers financial institutions to offer fractional stock rewards on everyday transactions and account activity.
Features
Auto-enrollment of digital banking users into investment accounts
Free-to-premium investing and rewards account structure
Stock roundups and recurring investments
Who’s it for?
Community banks and credit unions.
Express Wages
With Express Wages on-demand pay, employees receive some or all of their wages as they are earned.
Features
The Express Wages solution offers a simple, safe dashboard where users can see wages and view financial wellness.
Who’s it for?
Banks, employers, businesses, and credit unions.
Penny Finance
Penny Finance is an online financial planning engagement engine that attracts, retains, and serves the digital generation by helping them get out of debt, get into investing, and retire with wealth.
Features
Delivers custom financial plans for members within minutes
Drives 60% digital engagement and 30% product referrals
Scales seamlessly with expanding enterprise requirements
Who’s it for?
Credit unions, community banks, and small banks.
Solda.ai
Leading fintechs and banks use Solda.ai’s AI sales representatives to automate onboarding, upsell, KYC, and retention calls with <1% AI detection at 60% cost.
Features
Automates sales with top-performing AI trained across phone, text, email, and chat
Scales instantly with multi-lingual, on-brand engagement
Reduces costs by 40% with <1% AI-detection
Who’s it for?
Consumer and commercial fintechs, banks, payment providers, and other financial services companies.
SuperMoney
SuperMoney’s personal finance super app puts money on autopilot, using real-time credit and bank data to deliver intelligent, stress-free financial decisions.
Features
Keeps spending aligned with user goals with AI-powered budgeting
Delivers tailored financial insights to put money on autopilot
Automates finding better loans and credit cards with Refi Robot
