From left to right: Matt Calvano (Adaptive), Andres Santos (Comun), Dan Wertman (Noetica), Ali Hussain (Tabs), Gabriel Stengel (Rogo).

New York remains the undisputed king of early-stage fintech funding, and the quality of teams and rapid pace of innovation that we see daily is electrifying. At Primary, we’re constantly fielding the same questions (from downstream investors, job seekers, and industry executives) – “who are the most exciting fintech companies building in NYC?”

As annual tradition dictates, we compiled this list to spotlight 30 up-and-coming fintech companies operating in NYC. All those featured on the list meet the following criteria of having raised Seed or Series A rounds between $4-30 million in the last 18 months. Check out our inaugural 2024 list here.

There are seven couple of core themes underpinning this cohort of companies:

• The Verticalized Financial OS - Financial operations in many industries, from biotech to even banking, are so vertical-specific that they need vertically focused software that is tailor-made to fit their needs.
• AI-Native Solutions for CFOs - CFOs everywhere are increasingly expected to be more strategic, generation 1.0 of CFO tooling is being reimagined for an AI-centric world to turbocharge efficiency gains.
• Consumer Fintech Strikes Back - While financial services have moved online, many consumer pain points, from charitable giving to cross-border remittances, have yet to be solved, and the builders in this category are reimagining consumer experiences with the financial world.
• Streamlining Insurance Operations - Insurance runs on pen, paper, and email – and rarely do experiences delight. Innovators in this category are reimagining every part of the insurance value chain to bring new digital solutions to market.
• Modern Money Movement - The ways we pay, both domestically and globally, are changing rapidly, and new rails need to be laid to make faster, frictionless money movement a reality.
• Smarter Wealth Software - Financial advisors and wealth managers need to be able to adapt their strategies and approach to a digital-first, volatile, and rapidly changing world. Companies here are helping advisors deliver delight.
• The Specialized AI Analyst - While the roles themselves may have different names, across the financial and legal services world many jobs consist of finding, synthesizing, and actioning disparate information across hundreds of PDFs. Startups in this category are doing the heavy lifting – allowing people to focus on the last-mile analysis and delivery.

The Verticalized Financial OS

Adam Weisman, Cofounder and CEO of Auxilius

Auxilius, led by Adam Weisman, focuses on improving financial management for cutting-edge clinical trials in biotech. The comprehensive accounting and cost management software supports biopharma teams with a vision to help speed up the time it takes to bring drugs to market faster. Before co-founding Auxilius in 2020, Adam was the Senior VP at Decision Resources Group (which was acquired by Clarivate Analytics) and VP of M&A and Portfolio Operations at IndUS Growth Partners. This year, the Auxilius team raised $10 million in funding led by SignalFire, building on a client base of over 50 biopharma companies.

Ross Mechanic and Ashwin Raghu, Cofounders of Maybern

Founded by Ross Mechanic and Ashwin Raghu in 2021, Maybern delivers a unified platform built for the modern fund CFO that transforms finance teams from calculation validators to strategic leaders. The platform consolidates traditionally fragmented processes into a single source of truth, empowering CFOs to move beyond basic reporting to real-time strategic decision-making. The team raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Primary Ventures earlier this year.

Matt Calvano, Henry Bradlow, and Francisco Enriquez, Cofounders of Adaptive

Adaptive is an AI-native construction finance and accounting platform founded in 2021 by Matthew Calvano, Henry Bradlow, and Francisco Enriquez. The platform tackles persistent challenges in the construction industry—such as payment delays, cash flow bottlenecks, and compliance complexities—by automating workflows for budgeting, invoicing, expense tracking, accounts payable/receivable, and payments. Adaptive has rapidly gained traction, serving hundreds of construction companies and securing $19 million in Series A funding this July, led by Emergence Capital.

​​Akshay Venkitasubramanian, Kelvin Chan, and Urvish Parikh, Cofounders of Nirvana

Founded in 2020 by Akshay Venkitasubramanian, Kelvin Chan, and Urvish Parikh, Nirvana brings cost transparency to healthcare with its AI-powered platform. Akshay, who previously developed value-based care models at Mount Sinai, brings deep knowledge of healthcare systems. Kelvin and Urvish, with backgrounds in ML and engineering at Enigma, a Series C business data platform, apply their expertise to build AI models to interpret complex insurance benefits to determine cost. By verifying insurance coverage and cost, Nirvana boosts patient appointment bookings and reduces denials for provider revenue cycle management teams. In September, the team raised a Series A funding round of $24 million, led by Northzone.

Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis, Cofounders of Affiniti

Drawing on their experience in fintech, Aaron Bai and Sahil Phadnis founded Affiniti in 2022 to bring modern fintech to the overlooked small businesses across America's backbone industries. Affiniti partners with the leading trade association within each industry to launch tailored cash flow & expense management solutions for that specific industry. Within just 90 days of their launch, they surpassed $1M in annualized revenue. In November 2024, Affiniti announced $62 million in total financing, which includes $11 million in seed capital from Indicator Ventures, Emigrant Bank, Day One Ventures, and RiverPark Ventures.

Paolo Bertolotti and Adam DeVita, Cofounders of ModernFi

Credit unions and banks are the backbone of our financial system and they need better treasury management software too! Drawing on their backgrounds in machine learning, statistics, and economics, Paolo Bertolotti and Adam DeVita founded ModernFi in 2022 to develop deposit technology that helps financial institutions grow. ModernFi’s platform enables financial institutions of all sizes to optimize their balance sheets by connecting those with excess liquidity to others requiring deposits. Earlier this year, the ModernFi team raised $18.7 million in Series A financing led by Canapi Ventures.

AI-Native Solutions for CFOs

Ali Hussain and Deepak Bapat, Cofounders of Tabs

Tabs, founded by Ali Hussain and Deepak Bapat in 2023, is an AI Native Finance platform that enables B2B companies to automate their entire revenue process – from invoicing and revenue recognition to payments and reporting – all in one place. By leveraging its AI-enabled commercial graph, the platform extracts terms from contracts, creates billing schedules, and automates the sending of invoices so that finance teams can spend more time on strategy work. In October, the Tabs team raised $25 million in Series A financing led by General Catalyst and Lightspeed, bringing total funding to more than $35 million.

Guy Leibovitz and Golan Kopichinsky, Cofounders of Nominal

Nominal was founded by seasoned entrepreneurs Guy Leibovitz and Golan Kopichinsky, who previously launched Cognigo, an AI-driven data governance startup acquired by NetApp in 2019. Nominal provides a modern take on accounting and financial management with its generative AI-powered platform. The startup simplifies financial processes like multi-entity consolidation, lease accounting, and revenue recognition. Its unique shadow ledger integrates seamlessly with existing systems, eliminating the need for costly migrations. Nominal recently emerged from stealth mode, securing $9.2 million in seed funding led by Hyperwise Ventures and Bling Capital.

Saumil Annegiri and Karthik Nandyal, Cofounders and CoCEOs of CredCore

On a mission to reimagine corporate credit investing and management, Saumil Annegiri and Karthik Nandyal founded CredCore in 2022 to help Asset Managers and debt-issuing enterprises intelligently manage their credit stack and capital deployment. Both founders are seasoned entrepreneurs who wanted to solve a massive problem that asset managers face in accelerating deal throughput while maintaining their decision quality. CredCore's vertical-AI technology, custom-built for corporate credit, is trained on a corpus of $5 trillion of debt data—the largest in the world. According to Pitchbook, the team received $12 million in Series A funding in August, led by Avataar Venture Partners, and joined by Fitch Ventures and Inspired Capital.

Consumer Fintech Strikes Back

Andres Santos and Abiel Gutierrez, Cofounders of Comun

Andres Santos and Abiel Gutierrez both encountered numerous issues opening a bank account after moving to the US. The duo delved deeper into these challenges and discovered that the Latino community was underserved by traditional banking – that's when Comun was born. Founded in 2021, Comun empowers immigrants in the U.S. with accessible and affordable financial services. The platform offers features like an FDIC-insured checking account, a VISA debit card, and secure remittances to Latin America, all through a Spanish-first mobile app. In August, the Comun team announced a $21.5 million Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures, bringing its total funding to $30 million.

Steven Wang, Founder and CEO of dub

Steven Wang's early introduction to investing came in second grade when his parents lent him $200 to help him learn about building wealth. He went on to found and sell a VR company at 17 and then started working for Apple Watch at 18. A 22-year-old Harvard dropout, Steven founded dub in 2021 to pioneer the first US copy-trading platform. The idea is to democratize investing by leveraging the creator economy, enabling everyday investors to replicate the portfolios of prominent investment managers, hedge funds, and even public figures—all with just one tap. In early 2024, the dub team raised $17 million in a seed funding round led by Tusk Ventures.

Salomon Serfati, Aaron Kahane, and Drew Schneider, Cofounders of Chariot

What started as three friends committed to donating 10% of their income to charity annually eventually became Chariot. Founded in 2022 by Salomon Serfati, Aaron Kahane, and Drew Schneider (Y Combinator S22 alums), the fintech aims to streamline how donors give and nonprofits process payments. Dissatisfied with the inefficiencies of giving with a DAF, Chariot's first product, DAFpay, enables Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) contributions as effortlessly as using a credit card, broadening the reach of these funds to nonprofits like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. This summer, the Chariot team nabbed $11 million in Series A funding led by Maveron.

Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith, Co-founders of Fizz

After meeting during an internship, Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith quickly bonded over chats about the challenges of navigating personal finance as young adults. Determined to change this, the duo launched Fizz in 2023 to rethink financial literacy and credit-building for students. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, SV Angel, and Y Combinator, the fintech offers an app to build credit and manage finances every step of the way. With students at over 1000 universities using the app, Fizz combines an AI-powered budgeting platform with gamified financial education and a rewards system. This summer, the Fizz team landed $14.4M in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins.

Streamlining Insurance Operations

Ralph Betesh and Avery Rubin, Cofounders of Coverdash

Founded in 2022 by Ralph Betesh, Avery Rubin, and David Vainer, Coverdash is an insurtech platform shifting how small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access insurance. The startup offers a comprehensive suite of business insurance products, including general liability, workers' compensation, and cyber insurance, tailored to meet the needs of startups and SMBs often underserved by traditional providers. Its embedded technology allows partners across industries to integrate insurance offerings seamlessly, using just a single line of code. The Coverdash team recently raised $13.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Nyca Partners.

Cole Riccardi, Cofounder and CEO of Authentic Insurance

Authentic Insurance, founded by Cole Riccardi and Kyle Babirad, is redefining captive insurance with a tech-enabled platform tailored to SMBs. The startup simplifies a traditionally complex process, creating a solution that allows SMB affinity groups (SaaS platforms, associations, franchisors, etc.) to establish their own captive insurance offerings and open up new revenue streams. It handles all aspects of the process, from underwriting and pricing to claims management, while providing real-time, customizable insurance coverage to meet specific customer needs. In June, the team announced a $11 million Series A funding round led by FirstMark Capital.

Cory Crosland, Cofounder/CEO of PolicyFly

With a passion for leveraging the latest technology to evolve the status quo, and tired of seeing outdated processes needlessly slow down clients across the insurance industry, Cory cofounded PolicyFly in 2018 with a mission to digitize insurance administration. It's all-in-one digital platform helps insurers, agents and underwriters build more profitable programs, unlock new levels of productivity and increase customer satisfaction by replacing outdated manual processes with cloud-based automation. PolicyFly recently launched their AI offering which is capable of capturing insurance submissions from any email or system, making the specialty insurance market much more efficient. To date, PolicyFly has processed over $1B of insurance premium.

Eric Yen and Eilam Levitov, Cofounders of Stream

Eric Yen and Eilam Levitov founded Y Combinator-backed company Stream in 2022 with the aim of creating AI tools to reduce the time, cost, and effort that comes with processing medical documents for worker's compensation claims. The duo met while working at Next Insurance and saw for themselves how inefficient document processing was in the worker's comp industry. Stream's platform utilizes generative AI to summarize and extract insights from large sets of medical records, reducing claim review time from 8 days down to 1. In November, the Stream team announced a $5.3 million seed round led by Spark Capital, bringing the company's total funding to $6.8M.

Modern Money Movement

Ben Markowitz and Truett Dwyer, Cofounders of Clerq

Between the adoption of faster payment rails and the rising costs of accepting cost payments, now may be the moment for account-to-account (A2A) payments. Founded in 2022 by Ben Markowitz and Truett Dwyer, Clerq makes it quick, safe, and easy for businesses to accept low-cost payments directly from customers' bank accounts through its platform. In April 2024, the Clerq team raised $7.7 million in a seed funding round backed by a group of 15 investors, led by FirstMark Capital.

Martin Pustilnick, Sebastian Kontarovsky, Paulina Aguilar Vela, and Juan Christensen, Cofounders of Mundi

Mundi, founded in 2020 by Martin Pustilnick, Sebastian Kontarovsky, Paulina Aguilar Vela, and Juan Christensen, simplifies cross-border trade challenges for SMEs in Latin America. Based in New York and Mexico City, the platform is equipped with tools to simplify international collections, payments, managing currencies, and cargo insurance. In 2023, the Mundi team closed a Series A-2 round of $15 million, led by Haymaker Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures, GMO Ventures, and Square One Capital, among others.

Kieran O'Reilly and Rory O'Reilly, Cofounders of Knot

Knot set out to solve the pesky default card-on-file problem and the challenges that poses to consumers, merchants, and card issuers alike. The Knot platform makes it easy to connect cardholders and merchants through its innovative API. It was founded in 2022 by brothers Kieran and Rory O'Reilly, the repeat entrepreneurs behind GIFs.com and debit card company Millions. With Knot, the duo has built an API that simplifies the process for financial institutions, enabling them to instantly update card details with online merchants, significantly reducing friction for both consumers and businesses. In August 2023, the Knot team raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Nava Ventures, alongside American Express and Plaid as investors.

Albert Owusu-Asare and Ameer Shujjah, Cofounders of Cadana

Founded in 2021 by Albert Owusu-Asare and Ameer Shujjah, Cadana transforms payroll infrastructure for businesses hiring talent in emerging markets such as Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil. Albert and Ameer met while studying for double majors in computer science and physics at university. Both began their careers in fintech before starting Cadana to simplify payroll, ensure compliance with local regulations, and improve payment experiences for workers. In June, the Cadana team announced a $7.1 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures with participation from Better Tomorrow Ventures and 500 Global.

Kaustav Das and Manish Arora, Cofounders of Efficient Capital Labs

Efficient Capital Labs (ECL), founded by Kaustav Das and Manish Arora in 2022, provides fast, non-dilutive financing solutions for cross-border B2B SaaS companies - many of whom have significant operations in India and Southeast Asia. With over 20 years of experience in risk management, B2B SaaS, and fintech, Kaustav and Manish identified a gap in the funding available to companies operating in multiple regions. ECL’s approach evaluates revenue across geographies, enabling companies to access financing and scale efficiently regardless of their location. ECL also leverages proprietary technology to make the underwriting process more efficient. In August, the ECL team announced $11 million in Series A funding co-led by QED Investors and 645 Ventures.

Smarter Wealth Software

David Barnard, Ian Lyons, Dave St. Geme and Mary Huang of Luminary

With over 20 years of experience in wealth management, David Barnard saw firsthand the inefficiencies and challenges connecting client assets with legacy goals in wealth planning. In 2021, he teamed up with legendary investor and entrepreneur, Joe Lonsdale to start Luminary and transform wealth transfer through scalable, AI-driven tools. The platform enables advisors to collaborate efficiently, unlocking personalized, tax-optimized strategies through dynamic modeling and visualizations. The founding team of Dave St. Geme, Ian Lyons, and Mary Huang lead the product, engineering and commercial groups, respectively. In 2022, Luminary raised $9.5 million in a seed round led by 8VC.

Ankur Nagpal, Nick Rasch, Jessica Catorc, and Alejandro Roman, Cofounders of Carry

Carry is a financial services platform aimed at helping business owners build wealth through tax savings and smart investments. Originally launched as Ocho in 2022 by Ankur Nagpal, Nick Rasch, Jessica Catorc, and Alejandro Roman, Carry rebranded in 2023 and now focuses on helping users save on taxes by providing easy access to tax-advantaged accounts, optimizing investments in stocks or ETFs without AUM fees, and connecting with professional advisors when needed. It has since expanded to more than 1400 paying customers. Recently, the Carry team raised a $10 million Series A round led by Accomplice VC.

Ritik Malhotra, Founder and CEO of Savvy Wealth

A serial entrepreneur, Ritik Malhotra founded and sold two startups in his 20s (Streem, acquired by Box, and Elph, acquired by Brex). With the sudden influx of wealth, he began researching financial advice and soon realized that the wealth management space was incredibly outdated. Taking matters into his own hands, he started Savvy Wealth, a modern platform that supports financial advisors in managing and growing their practice through Savvy's software and services. In August, the fintech closed a $26.5 million Series A round led by Canvas Ventures.

David Kleinhandler, Eduard Snesarev, Michael Doniger, Roy Reilly, and Hilliard Milner, Cofounders of Optifino

Optifino's cofounders – David Kleinhandler, Eduard Snesarev, Michael Doniger, Roy Reilly, and Hilliard Milner – bring extensive industry knowledge and expertise in insurance, investment, and technology. Founded in 2022, the insurtech has built a proprietary platform that provides tailored solutions to demystify life insurance policies to secure financial futures and maximize savings. They help clients compare policies and make data-driven decisions to meet their financial goals. Recently, the Optifino team raised $6.3 million in seed funding led by 8VC, MS&AD Insurance Group, and HOF.

The Specialized AI Analyst

Gabriel Stengel, Cofounder and CEO of Rogo

Rogo, founded in 2021 by Gabriel Stengel and John Willett, is on a mission to make financial firms – and the people who work there – smarter with the help of AI. Stengel, who previously worked as an investment banker at Lazard and software engineer at MongoDB, envisions Rogo as an enterprise AI platform to address inefficiencies and information gaps in financial services. The fintech specializes in fine-tuning generative AI models to search internal data, automate workflows, and answer complex financial queries with citations. Recently, the Rogo team announced a $18.5 million Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures.

Dan Wertman, Tom Effland, and Yoni Sebag, Cofounders of Noetica

Founded in 2022 by Dan Wertman, Tom Effland, and Yoni Sebag, Noetica has built an AI-driven data analytics platform that helps deals professionals at law firms and financial institutions benchmark terms and spot trends across their entire database of documents and transactions, providing a data-driven analysis that can finally answer the question “what’s market?”. In the past year, Noetica's platform has seen strong market pull and is reportedly now working with 10 of the top 25 law firms. In October, the team nabbed $22 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Olivier Babin and Naunidh Singh Bhalla, Cofounders of Tetrix

Olivier Babin and Naunidh Singh Bhalla initially met as classmates at Stanford's MBA program, and they went on to found Tetrix in 2023 to tackle problems they saw in the alternative investments space. The duo have built a platform that leverages AI to ingest unstructured documents such as quarterly fund reports and transform these into actionable recommendations. This empowers capital allocators to save valuable time otherwise spent on manual data parsing and manage their alternative portfolio by seamlessly leveraging otherwise difficult to obtain look-through insights and analytics. In September, the Tetrix team closed a $5 million seed round led by Innovation Endeavors.