Looking into 2025, fintech leads investor interest, with 52% of investors eyeing disruption in finance, followed closely by healthcare and enterprise tech, according to June reports from Pitchbook. Deep tech bets remain strong, with 58% of investors backing robotics plays from founders. A notable trend is the rise of vertical AI startups, which offer laser-focused solutions targeting specific SaaS incumbents (such as the previously-mentioned healthcare and financial services, as well as the legal sector). Vertical AI companies in these arenas captured over $1 billion in combined funding in 2025 year-to-date, surpassing infrastructure and horizontal AI categories. The push for capital is not limited to one area or sector, as AI investment continues to be the top topic for VC firms and founders right now. When it comes to accessing the gold rush of investor dollars around AI investment, leaders in the world of entrepreneurship need to keep these three key communication principles in mind: Context over Content: the ability to create a story that is real, relatable and powerful is the key to a successful pitch. Relatability and access is the key for AI investment – and that access begins with the context for the concept. That relatability is what creates the relationships that matter, when it comes to finding funding for your startup. Authenticity, Not Hype: accessing capital investment always starts at the same place: a conversation. Even in a high-stakes pitch, like the kind you see on Shark Tank, the conversation is where business decisions are made. Numbers Speak Louder than Words: Stanford’s AI index report says that training OpenAI’s ChatGPT cost more than $78 million in compute resources last year. In the world of AI startups, the cost of compute can eat away at sustainable margins, numbers speak louder than words. That’s why founders have to emphasize data, not adjectives, in order to give investors a clear picture of what an AI startup really needs.
Stablecoins, by enabling instant cross-border payments and costing below $0.01 could allow companies to shift to a financial streaming model with the size of local buffers dramatically reduced and could freeing up trillions in capital
Stablecoins will allow companies to shift to a financial streaming model that could free up trillions in capital for new investment, says Paul Brody. Things may look different in the future. If it costs nothing to move money globally and it can be done nearly instantly, the size of those local buffers can be dramatically reduced. Instead of keeping two weeks’ worth of expenses locally, including payroll, you might just choose to keep only a day’s worth on hand. A slightly larger cash pile can be kept centrally and sent out as needed. Companies could rebalance their global cash holdings every six hours. The result: a significant decrease in working capital requirements. What may start at a global level for large firms could spread quickly, and not just in the B2B space. At 5% interest rates, a $10 debt over the course of a year generates $0.50 in interest at current rates, which is about $0.04 per month. Each week of “float” you can save (or earn) is worth roughly $0.01. Given that payment costs on Ethereum Layer 2 networks are now routinely below $0.01, the answer is yes, it is worth it. Transaction costs are headed in only one direction, which means the economically efficient size and frequency of managing your money only gets more granular. Once upon time, the idea of streaming music on demand – and all the bandwidth and computation needed to do that – was seen as ridiculous. Now, it is barely a drop in the bucket compared to video streaming. There is no reason to think payments are different. Shifting to a financial streaming model could literally free up trillions in capital for new investment. Incentives for things like using services or energy at off-peak times might be much more effective when the payout is immediate.
Increasingly, enterprise customers are systematically rejecting single-vendor AI strategies in favor of multi-model approaches that match specific LLMs to targeted use cases.
Armand Ruiz, VP of AI Platform at IBM detailed how Big Blue is thinking about generative AI and how its enterprise users are actually deploying the technology. A key theme that Ruiz emphasized is that at this point, it’s not about choosing a single LLM provider or technology. Increasingly, enterprise customers are systematically rejecting single-vendor AI strategies in favor of multi-model approaches that match specific LLMs to targeted use cases. IBM has its own open-source AI models with the Granite family, but it is not positioning that technology as the only choice, or even the right choice for all workloads. This enterprise behavior is driving IBM to position itself not as a foundation model competitor, but as what Ruiz referred to as a control tower for AI workloads. IBM’s response to this market reality is a newly released model gateway that provides enterprises with a single API to switch between different LLMs while maintaining observability and governance across all deployments. The technical architecture allows customers to run open-source models on their own inference stack for sensitive use cases while simultaneously accessing public APIs like AWS Bedrock or Google Cloud’s Gemini for less critical applications. “That gateway is providing our customers a single layer with a single API to switch from one LLM to another LLM and add observability and governance all throughout,” Ruiz said. The company has developed ACP (Agent Communication Protocol) and contributed it to the Linux Foundation. ACP is a competitive effort to Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol which was contributed by Google to the Linux Foundation. The agent orchestration protocols provide standardized ways for AI systems to interact across different platforms and vendors. IBM’s real-world deployment data suggests several critical shifts for enterprise AI strategy: Abandon chatbot-first thinking: Organizations should identify complete workflows for transformation rather than adding conversational interfaces to existing systems. The goal is to eliminate human steps, not improve human-computer interaction. Architect for multi-model flexibility: Rather than committing to single AI providers, enterprises need integration platforms that enable switching between models based on use case requirements while maintaining governance standards. Invest in communication standards: Organizations should prioritize AI tools that support emerging protocols like MCP, ACP, and A2A rather than proprietary integration approaches that create vendor lock-in.
FedNow hikes transaction limit increase from $500,000 to $1 million to support higher-value use cases; also enables defining dollar value and transaction velocity thresholds based on customer segments
A new account activity threshold feature is now available for the FedNow Service, allowing financial institutions to strengthen risk mitigation efforts by defining dollar value and transaction velocity thresholds based on customer segments. The new functionality coincides with a transaction limit increase from $500,000 to $1 million to support higher-value use cases, including business-related transactions. “These new value-added features offer FedNow participants more options to customize their instant payments profile, adding to the suite of available tools that allow financial institutions to tailor activity according to risk management needs and customer activity,” said Mark Gould, chief payments executive for Federal Reserve Financial Services. “Feedback from the industry has been invaluable, and we intend to remain agile and responsive to new and changing customer needs as instant payments grow and mature.” Account activity thresholds provide further control as more financial institutions enable “send” capabilities on the network. Financial institutions can set parameters around sending activity for a wide range of customer segments, from established business customers to new individual account holders, as an additional level of security. “With these controls, our customer base of community banks will have more confidence in expanding their instant payment capabilities, especially when it comes to ‘send’ functionality, which will ultimately help all financial institutions remain competitive in the marketplace,” said Brooke Tiedt, senior vice president, payments and cash management at Bankers’ Bank. “The ability to add controls based on specific customers helps set the FedNow Service apart from other payment offerings.” The FedNow Service is nearing its second anniversary with approximately 1,400 banks and credit unions on the network across all 50 states. Community banks and credit unions make up more than 95% of total participants.
Block claims to have prevented $2 billion in potential P2P fraud scams since 2020, aided by real time in-app Cash App payments warnings to examine their transactions before moving ahead
Block Risk Lead Brian Boates found that even tech-savvy young consumers who use their phones as a conduit to everyday life reported the challenges of avoiding scams. “The last time we went into the field, we found that about 3 in 10 consumers say they’ve been scammed, and about 40% of Gen Z” has fallen prey to the fraudsters, Webster said. This statistic underscores a challenge for the payments industry. It must protect individuals who value and use peer-to-peer (P2P) payments as a staple of their daily financial lives. To that end, Block announced Thursday (June 26) the prevention of approximately $2 billion in potential P2P fraud scams since 2020, aided by advanced technologies and the in-app Cash App payments warnings feature that alerts customers in real time to examine their transactions before moving ahead. A challenge in combating scams lies in the nature of the transactions themselves. Many of them are authorized transactions. Unlike traditional fraud where an unauthorized party gains access to an account, in scam scenarios, “the customer is willing and wants to proceed with the payment,” Boates said. This makes intervention particularly complex, as it requires interrupting a user’s determined intent. The emotional conviction tied to these transactions often supersedes rational caution. Beyond direct scams, the payment industry also grapples with the persistent issue of first-party fraud. This occurs when an individual misrepresents a legitimate transaction as a scam to reclaim funds. Block’s various lines of defense against these evolving threats are rooted in its technological prowess. “Block is a technology company,” Boates said. “We take a very technology-forward approach to solving these kinds of problems.” He said that “when it comes to fraud and scam detection, it’s really rooted in machine learning. We’ve built a number of models internally using all of the data points that we have historically that have gotten really, really good at detecting potentially scam payments in real time.” Machine learning powers the warning feature where the company intervenes with users when the models signal a transaction may be high risk, rather than introducing friction into each payment, he said. The warning “gives customers a moment to pause, reflect and reconsider [the transaction], if it feels right, and if they’d like to proceed with the payment or not,” Boates said. The precision of these warnings is a key factor in their effectiveness. They are issued for only about 1.5% of P2P payments made through Cash App, he said. Beyond these warnings, Block’s models can take more definitive action when risk levels spike.
U.S. Bank reinvents approach to brand storytelling and go-to-market using synthetic audience profiles and AI avatars of key target customers
US Bank partnered with a startup called Supernatural AI that can create AI avatars of key target customers and shave months off the strategic development cycle. “We’re able to get to the answers we need way more quickly than we could through a typical human process only,” CMO Michael Lacorazza said. Supernatural created five different audiences profiles for us based on what we were going after demographically and psychographically. They used multiple third-party data sources to assemble the audiences and then trained them using different models so we could activate against them. You can ask these audiences the same sort of questions as you’d ask humans and get responses back, but you’re doing it through a large-language model chat engine. Say we have a synthetic audience of young, affluent, college-educated people in the first one-third of their career. Maybe they’ve also formed a household and they’re financially stable. We could ask them questions about what’s important to them in their banking relationship, what type of products they’re looking for and what sort of financial decisions they need help with. It was very important to us at first to see if we could validate what we were being told because, you know, these insights are being generated by a machine. So we did some tests with humans and the themes came back with a 90% to 95% overlap with the synthetic audiences. Going forward, we’ll continue to validate, especially as models change and evolve, but we have a lot of confidence in what we’re doing. And, at the end of the day, humans are making the final decisions on all of the work we do. We always apply our own judgment.
SoFi returns to offering crypto investing and also anticipates expanding into stablecoins and other types of digital assets
SoFi Technologies is returning to crypto investing after a two-year hiatus — and the digital bank is also launching cross-border remittance payments in its app as it expands its “one-stop shop” strategy for digital financial services. The digital bank announced on Wednesday that its customers will be able to buy, sell and hold popular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum through SoFi’s website and mobile app. SoFi also anticipates expanding into stablecoins and other types of digital assets. SoFi, which originally started as an online student loan refinancer and has since expanded into a wide range of digital banking products and services, will be officially releasing both its crypto and remittance services later this year for its customers. An exact timeline or release date was not announced by the company. “The future of financial services is being completely reinvented through innovations in crypto, digital assets and blockchain more broadly,” said SoFi CEO Anthony Noto in a statement. “We’re accelerating our efforts to give members more choice and more control, whether they’re investing, sending money across borders, or planning for their future. Crypto and blockchain innovations can and will be threaded through each of our businesses and capabilities, including buying, paying, saving, investing, borrowing and protecting.” Remittance payments — transactions sent to a foreign country when the sender is located in the U.S. — are a chunk of the global money movement economy that the United States contributes significantly to. The U.S. sent more than $188 billion in remittances abroad in 2021, according to the World Bank. All told, $478 billion in remittances were sent worldwide that year. Remittance payments processing in the U.S. could be subject to the 3.5% remittance tax in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill if that portion of the bill passes in its current form. SoFi declined a request for comment, but the company’s announcement did state that customers would have “full transparency on exchange rates and fees upfront” for remittance payments within the SoFi app.
Wells Fargo hires Muir Paterson from Citi to lead activism defense practice to help clients facing pressure from activist investors
Wells Fargo has hired a senior banker from Citigroup to lead its activism defense practice, as corporations scramble to build out business units to help clients facing pressure from activist investors. The bank is bringing on Muir Paterson as a managing director and head of shareholder advisory and defense from Citigroup where he was a managing director and global head of shareholder advisory and defense. He will report to Jeff Hogan, Wells’ head of global mergers and acquisitions. The hire dovetails with Wells’ goal of building out its investment banking division. Wells has been looking for a senior banker to head its activism defense practice for months. The move also comes just weeks after Jefferies hired veteran Lazard banker Rich Thomas as its new global head of activism defense and JPMorgan Chase in April hired two veteran bankers, Duncan Herrington and Lyndon Park, in its global shareholder engagement and M&A capital markets group. Paterson will join Wells after a period of garden leave and work in New York. Before joining Citi in 2017, Paterson worked for Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management and proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services. At Citi he helped advise Mercury Systems when Jana Partners and Starboard Value pushed for changes and Berry Global Group in its engagement with Ancora Holdings. Wells has been busy in building out its M&A business and recently hired two senior bankers from Goldman Sachs, Chris DiOrio and Kieran Ryan, to head industrials M&A and head sponsors M&A respectively.
ABA unveils new tool to fight Treasury check fraud by creating a centralized point of access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s existing Treasury Check Verification System (TCVS)
The American Bankers Association on Wednesday launched a new online platform to help member banks more easily verify government checks and their payee information. The service creates a centralized point of access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s existing Treasury Check Verification System (TCVS). The new ABA-supported service arrives as financial institutions grapple with increasing check fraud. Treasury checks are 16 times more likely to be reported lost or stolen, returned undeliverable or altered compared to electronic funds transfer, according to the White House. The ABA designed this new tool to help member banks directly combat this elevated risk. “We’re excited to offer this new tool in the banking industry’s ongoing fight against fraud, and we appreciate the Treasury Department’s support for this new platform,” said Rob Nichols, ABA President and CEO. “Banks accessing the TCVS through ABA will be able to spot potentially fraudulent government checks in real-time, which will help protect taxpayers, banks and the federal government from millions in fraud losses.” The new ABA platform offers a key enhancement: the ability to confirm payee name, a feature not available through the U.S. Treasury’s public-facing TCVS page. Banks traditionally accessed payee name validation only through the U.S. Fiscal Service’s secure TCVS API, which requires financial institutions to build a direct connection and integrate it into their systems, a process that can take months. The ABA’s new platform bypasses this complex direct API integration, offering payee validation without the need for banks to develop their own API integrations.
Mobey Forum’s new report lays out actionable strategies for success of three core embedded finance models—API-Driven Banking, Verticalized Offering, and Platform Banking
Mobey Forum, a global association for banks, has released a report titled “Embedded Finance: A Strategic Roadmap for Banks,” offering actionable insights for banks to succeed in the digital economy by embedding financial services into digital ecosystems, reshaping customer experiences, and delivering integrated, customer-centric solutions. The report explores three core Embedded Finance business models. First, API-Driven Banking positions banks as “producers” that expose their financial products and services through APIs, allowing external platforms to embed these offerings seamlessly. This model emphasizes automation, scalability, and alignment with regulations like PSD2/3 and Open Banking, broadening banks’ distribution channels. Second, the Verticalised Offering model casts banks as “distributors,” integrating third-party services into their offerings while retaining control over branding and customer relationships, thus enriching solutions within a unified experience. Third, Platform Banking represents the most comprehensive model, where banks act as “marketplace orchestrators” facilitating exchanges among producers, consumers, and partners in a centralized ecosystem. Unlike the vertical model, this approach enables onboarding of users who may not initially be banking customers. The report provides practical frameworks and maturity models to guide banks in embedding finance effectively, with strategies such as developing robust API infrastructures and forming strategic third-party partnerships. Real-world case studies from UBS, PostFinance, and SEB Embedded demonstrate how Embedded Finance can drive customer engagement and unlock new revenue. Ultimately, the report issues a call to action, warning that banks must define their Embedded Finance strategies now or risk losing market relevance, customer loyalty, and income streams to faster-moving non-bank competitors.