Mercury

Mercury (legally Mercury Technologies, Inc.) is an American financial-technology company that provides online business banking and financial-operations software aimed primarily at startups and small and medium-sized businesses. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Francisco, the company offers FDIC-insured checking and savings accounts, corporate cards, bill pay, invoicing, and treasury tools delivered through partnerships with chartered banks rather than as a bank itself. ^[1][2] Since 2024 Mercury has aggressively positioned itself around the artificial-intelligence boom, marketing itself as a bank for AI-native founders and shipping AI features for finance workflows, including an agentic interface, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, and AI-assisted bill processing. ^[3][4]

In May 2026 Mercury raised a $200 million Series D at a $5.2 billion valuation led by TCV, weeks after receiving conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to operate a federally chartered bank. ^[1][5] The company reported roughly $650 million in annualized revenue, more than 300,000 business customers, and several consecutive years of profitability at the time of the round. ^[1][6]

Overview

Mercury sells a digital banking and finance-operations platform built for technology companies and other businesses that prefer software-driven banking over traditional branch banking. Core accounts are FDIC-insured business checking and savings accounts; layered on top are a corporate charge card (Mercury IO), accounts-payable bill pay, invoicing, expense management, employee reimbursements, treasury and money-market sweeps, and venture-debt financing. ^[2][7] Because Mercury is not itself a chartered bank, customer deposits are held at partner banks, principally Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., and a sweep network spreads balances across multiple program banks so that customers can obtain FDIC coverage well beyond the standard $250,000 per-bank limit. ^[2][7]

The company differentiates itself on product design, fast onboarding, and developer-friendly automation. It exposes a banking API and, since 2025, command-line and AI-agent interfaces, which has reinforced its appeal among software-first founders. ^[4] Mercury's customer base skews heavily toward venture-backed startups; the company has said roughly one in three U.S. startups bank with it. ^[1][6]

History and founding

Mercury was founded in 2017 by Immad Akhund (chief executive officer), Max Tagher (chief technology officer), and Jason Zhang (chief operating officer). ^[2][8] The three had previously worked together at Heyzap, a mobile-advertising network Akhund co-founded in 2008 and that was acquired by Fyber in 2015. Akhund has said he conceived of a modern startup bank around 2013, observing that developer and operations tooling from companies such as Stripe had modernized rapidly while business banking remained dated, but waited until 2017 to launch. ^[8]

Mercury opened its business bank accounts to customers in 2019. ^[2] Growth accelerated sharply in March 2023, when the failure of Silicon Valley Bank pushed large numbers of startups to seek alternatives; Mercury reported gaining nearly 26,000 new customers in the four months after the collapse. ^[9] The company subsequently broadened its product line, adding venture debt in 2022, a corporate charge card in 2022, a suite of bill-pay, invoicing, and reimbursement tools in 2024, and a consumer offering, Mercury Personal, beginning in 2024. ^[2]

A formative episode for Mercury was its relationship with Synapse, a banking-as-a-service middleware provider that sat between many fintechs and their partner banks. Mercury, which accounted for a large share of Synapse's volume, moved more than $3 billion of deposits off Synapse to work directly with partner bank Evolve Bank & Trust in 2023, well before Synapse entered bankruptcy in April 2024 and left other fintechs' customers with frozen accounts. ^[10][11] Mercury later said the experience convinced it that direct relationships and integrations with partner banks were essential, a lesson that informed its later push toward its own bank charter. ^[10] Mercury wound down its Evolve relationship by the end of 2025. ^[2]

Products (banking and AI)

Mercury's platform combines deposit accounts with software that automates back-office finance work. The corporate card, bill pay, invoicing, expense management, and reimbursements are integrated directly into the banking dashboard, putting Mercury in competition with spend-management fintechs as well as banks. ^[2][7]

Beginning in 2024, Mercury layered artificial intelligence across these workflows and built much of its 2026 marketing around AI-native founders. Notable AI and automation features include: ^[3][4][12]

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In April 2026 Mercury acquired Central, an AI-native payroll and benefits platform that uses a mix of AI agents and human experts to run payroll, benefits, paid time off, and state compliance. Central had processed more than $175 million in payroll for roughly 500 startups, many of them already Mercury customers; the acquisition filled a payroll gap in Mercury's product line, terms undisclosed. ^[12]

CEO Immad Akhund has framed the strategy around an AI-driven surge in company formation, saying that "AI is collapsing the friction between an idea and a company faster than anything I have seen in my career" and predicting more new founders in the next five years than in the prior twenty. ^[3] Mercury reported that applications grew about 2.5 times year over year in the first quarter of 2026. ^[5] These claims of an AI-native banking interface reflect the company's own positioning; as of mid-2026 the fuller conversational product, Mercury Command, was announced rather than broadly shipped. ^[3][4]

Funding and bank charter

Mercury raised early venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz, which led its 2019 Series A, and has since raised progressively larger rounds. Its funding history, as reported, is summarized below.

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The 2021 Series B, at about a $1.62 billion valuation, was led by Coatue with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, and others; at that time Mercury served more than 40,000 businesses and held over $4 billion in deposits. ^[13][14] The March 2025 Series C of $300 million, combining primary and secondary capital, was led by Sequoia Capital and doubled the valuation to $3.5 billion; Mercury then reported more than 200,000 customers, about $500 million in 2024 revenue, $156 billion in annual payment volume, and ten consecutive quarters of profitability on both an EBITDA and GAAP net-income basis. ^[15]

The May 2026 Series D of $200 million was led by TCV, with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Coatue, and set a $5.2 billion valuation, up roughly 49 percent from the prior round in about 14 months. ^[1][6] Mercury attributed the round in part to an AI-driven increase in new-business formation and cited roughly $650 million in annualized revenue, about 300,000 customers, and continued profitability. ^[1][6]

Separately, in December 2025 Mercury applied to the OCC for a national bank charter, and in April 2026 it received conditional approval to establish a de novo bank, to be called Mercury Bank and based in Salt Lake City, Utah. ^[5] A charter would let Mercury hold deposits directly, expand lending to businesses and individuals, build its own payments infrastructure, and integrate the Zelle network, reducing its reliance on partner banks. ^[5] As of mid-2026 the approval was conditional and the bank had not yet begun operating; Mercury continued to work with Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. as sponsor banks while it pursued the charter. ^[5]

Competition and significance

Mercury competes most directly with other technology-forward finance providers serving startups and SMBs, including Brex and Ramp in corporate cards and spend management, Stripe and other platforms in payments and treasury, and traditional and regional banks in core deposits. ^[2][6] Its expansion into bill pay, invoicing, expense management, and payroll has broadened these rivalries from banking into the wider business-finance-software market. ^[2][12]

Mercury's significance lies in its emergence as one of the largest banking platforms for startups following the 2023 regional-banking turmoil, and in its bid to combine that deposit franchise with AI-driven finance automation and, prospectively, its own bank charter. If completed, the charter would mark a notable shift from the banking-as-a-service model that underpinned the prior generation of neobanks toward fintechs operating as regulated banks in their own right. ^[5][16] The company's 2026 framing as a bank for AI-native founders also illustrates how the startup-services sector has reoriented around the AI boom, though several of its most ambitious AI products remained early or newly announced at the time. ^[3][4]

References

1. Rooney, Kate. "Fintech firm Mercury hits $5.2 billion valuation after funding round, up 49% in 14 months." CNBC, May 20, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/fintech-mercury-valuation-fundraise-bank-charter.html ↩
2. "Mercury Technologies." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Technologies ↩
3. "Mercury hits $5.2B valuation after $200M funding to become the go-to bank for AI startups." Tech Startups, May 20, 2026. https://techstartups.com/2026/05/20/mercury-hits-5-2b-valuation-after-200m-funding-to-become-the-go-to-bank-for-ai-startups/ ↩
4. "The dashboard is losing the account: Mercury is testing the replacement." Implicator.ai, 2026. https://www.implicator.ai/the-dashboard-is-losing-the-account-mercury-bank-is-testing-the-replacement/ ↩
5. "Mercury raises $200 million after OCC bank charter approval." American Banker, May 2026. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/mercury-raises-200-million-after-occ-bank-charter-approval ↩
6. "Mercury Raises $200 Million Series D at $5.2B Valuation." Business Wire, May 20, 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260520511817/en/Mercury-Raises-$200-Million-Series-D-at-$5.2B-Valuation ↩
7. "Full Banking API, Terminal-Native CLI & AI-Ready MCP Server." Mercury. https://mercury.com/api ↩
8. "Report: Mercury Business Breakdown & Founding Story." Contrary Research. https://research.contrary.com/company/mercury ↩
9. Mascarenhas, Natasha. "Mercury says it gained nearly 26K new customers in the four months after SVB's collapse." TechCrunch, July 7, 2023. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/07/mercury-says-it-gained-nearly-26k-new-customers-in-the-four-months-after-svbs-collapse/ ↩
10. "The spectacular Synapse collapse." Fortune, March 7, 2025. https://fortune.com/2025/03/07/synapse-evolve-mercury-bankruptcy-lawsuits/ ↩
11. "Infighting among fintech players has caused TabaPay to 'pull out' from buying bankrupt Synapse." TechCrunch, May 9, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/09/tabapay-ends-plans-synapse-mercury-evolve/ ↩
12. "Mercury acquires AI-native payroll platform Central to expand financial operations." The Paypers, April 6, 2026. https://thepaypers.com/mergers-aquisitions-and-investments/news/mercury-acquires-ai-native-payroll-platform-central-to-expand-financial-operations ↩
13. "Digital banking start-up Mercury hits $1.6bn valuation with new $120m funding." FinTech Futures, 2021. https://www.fintechfutures.com/digital-banking/digital-banking-start-up-mercury-hits-1-6bn-valuation-with-new-120m-funding ↩
14. "We raised a $120m Series B, and you can join the round." Mercury, 2021. https://mercury.com/blog/inside-mercury/series-b ↩
15. Mascarenhas, Natasha. "Fintech Mercury lands $300M in Sequoia-led Series C, doubles valuation to $3.5B." TechCrunch, March 26, 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/26/fintech-mercury-lands-300m-in-sequoia-led-series-c-doubles-valuation-to-3-5b/ ↩
16. "The Synapse-Evolve Disaster: One Year Later." Fintech Business Weekly, 2025. https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/p/the-synapse-evolve-disaster-one-year ↩