Plaid

Plaid holds a $13 billion valuation by operating the financial data infrastructure connecting 8,000+ fintech apps like Venmo and Robinhood to 12,000+ financial institutions. Founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey, it is faster than the average financial API provider, with a 99.9% uptime rate and less than 200-millisecond response times. Visa’s attempted $5.3 billion acquisition in 2021, blocked by the DOJ for monopoly concerns, underscores Plaid’s critical role; it now verifies 500 million consumer accounts, making it the backbone of digital finance, outpacing #2 Stripe in financial data coverage.