Participated · Series A · Jun 2026

Lama AI develops an AI-agent platform that provides credit-risk assessment solutions to banks and fintech companies to speed and improve loan approvals for small and medium-sized businesses. Since launching, the company expanded support across the full lifecycle of additional credit products, including commercial and industrial lending, commercial real estate financing, and credit cards. Lama AI reports 300% year-over-year growth and says customers have achieved improvements of several hundred percent in key business performance metrics. Financially, the company has now surpassed $20 million in total funding following its $12 million Series A. The company plans to scale its go-to-market, sales, and marketing teams to meet growing demand from U.S. banks.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2026

Thrive Financial operates a loan servicing platform that links homeowners and lenders to finance home improvement projects such as pool installations and HVAC work. Founded in 2023 by Ryan Cannon and Jasjeev Sawhney, the company has onboarded roughly 850 active contractors and has originated about 1,300 loans totaling $118 million since launch. Thrive currently employs nearly 50 people and says it expects to reach profitability later this year. The business has raised between $15 million and $18 million in venture capital to date, including the recent $7 million round. The new capital will be allocated with approximately $5 million for capitalization and about $2 million to expand engineering, sales and customer service teams.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2025

Verdata provides proprietary commercial risk data and analytics to automate partner assessments and continuous monitoring across the B2B relationship lifecycle. Its platform delivers verified cross-industry insights on business identity, financial stability, service reliability, and regulatory compliance, supported by a proprietary network of more than 20 million active U.S. businesses. The company’s solutions are used in SMB lending, POS financing, commercial insurance, and embedded finance to reduce fraud, manage compliance, and prioritize high-impact workflows. Verdata announced an $8 million Series A to accelerate product innovation, strengthen customer support, and extend its reach across key industries. The platform aims to reduce manual intervention, mitigate fraud and compliance risks, and unlock new revenue opportunities through scalable, objective risk assessments. Verdata provides a counterparty data and insight network that helps finance and payments companies mitigate risk through a proprietary contributed database augmented with public and third‑party fraud, licensing, and verification data. The platform delivers deep behavioral insights and comprehensive predictive analytic solutions for retail financing companies, payment service providers and SME lenders. Initial core products include a partner onboarding platform plus continuous monitoring and notification capabilities across a company’s partner portfolio. Verdata also offers a Complaint Hub that provides unified communication, workflow efficiencies, seller-centric visibility, and insights for managing consumer-related disputes and complaints. The company is led by CEO Mike Mondelli and is based in Atlanta, GA. Verdata raised seed funding and intends to use the proceeds to continue expanding operations and its business reach.

Participated · Series A · Apr 2025

Scamnetic develops patented AI scam-detection technology that can be integrated into enterprise platforms to help service providers safeguard consumers. Its product suite includes Scan&Score for scanning messages, websites, QR codes and images; IDeveryone for identity verification across video, audio and text; a 24/7 Scam Intervention hotline; and Scam Education resources. The company said the new funds will be used to expand marketing, sales and customer support and to accelerate its product roadmap. Scamnetic plans enhanced core features, stronger global coverage and deeper customer lifecycle support in response to rising global demand. The announcement highlights the high market need for scam protection given growing losses to fraud and scams cited in the release. The company is based in Tampa, Fla.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2025

Synctera operates a banking-and-payments platform that enables companies to build and scale embedded financial products and equips sponsor banks to manage compliant partnerships. The company serves both enterprise and consumer-facing customers, and recently signed Bolt as its largest customer to date and launched an Alliant Insurance Services program with Unified Signal. Synctera has integrated Hawk’s AI-driven AML and CFT technology into its core platform to strengthen risk management and compliance. The firm says the new funding will support acceleration of growth and the ability to meet more complex needs and increased scale of its latest customers. Synctera was launched in 2020 and is presented in the article from San Francisco. The company has raised a total of $94M to date. Synctera provides a banking-as-a-service platform that brings together fintech companies and sponsor banks through a single API, enabling fintechs to launch embedded banking products quickly. The platform emphasizes automation, compliance, and risk controls so banks can work confidently with fintechs of all sizes and does not require a core banking integration. Synctera monetizes by charging setup and access fees and taking a share of transaction fees, interest earned and interchange with its marketplace of banks. The company reports revenue was up 20x year-over-year in the fourth quarter and that usage metrics and revenue are growing roughly 30% month-on-month in areas like payment volume. Synctera is working with 50 fintechs (14 live, including Wayapay and Float) and has another 20+ in implementation slated for launch in March and April. The remote-first company has about 110 employees (50 in Canada) and plans in 2023 to add support for credit, lending and other banking use cases while expanding into new geographies and client segments. Synctera provides a Banking-as-a-Service platform that connects community banks and fintechs, managing back-end operations, regulatory compliance, reconciliation and billing to simplify partnership banking. The company evaluates banks’ needs and matches them with fintechs in a marketplace designed for personalized fits on geography, brand ethos and business goals. It has signed three banks so far and plans to sign three more this month, and has paired partners including Coastal Community Bank with One and Ellevest. Synctera employs about 50 people, including roughly two dozen engineers (most located in Canada), and plans to grow headcount to about 160 by year-end with hires focused on engineering, sales, marketing and customer success. Looking ahead the company plans to onboard many more fintechs, support small-business fintechs in the near term, and pursue offerings such as a neobank for gig workers and lending-as-a-service. CEO Peter Hazlehurst previously led Uber Money and worked on Google Wallet and payments products, informing the company’s focus on bridging legacy banks and modern fintechs. Synctera has built a two-sided partnership banking marketplace that fits between banks and FinTech partners to facilitate integrations and product launches. The platform aims to reduce risk and speed time-to-market by addressing regulatory requirements such as AML and KYC and by decoupling bilateral bank–partner integrations into a marketplace model. The company launched out of stealth and is initially offering its platform in the United States, going live with Coastal Community Bank and One as launch partners. Synctera is incorporated in the U.S., has a Canadian subsidiary, and its engineering team is based in Toronto; the company describes its product as portable and regulation agnostic with plans to be a global play. The startup raised a CAD$15.8M (US$12.4M) all-equity seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Diagram Ventures and several angel investors. Post-investment, its board includes CEO Peter Hazlehurst, Ansaf Kareem (Lightspeed), and Frederic Latreille (Diagram).