# Mercury

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/mercury_bank
> Updated: 2026-06-08
> Categories: AI Companies
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

**Mercury** (legally Mercury Technologies, Inc.) is an American [financial-technology](/wiki/fintech) company that provides online business banking and financial-operations software aimed primarily at [startups](/wiki/startup) 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](/wiki/ai_agent) interface, a [Model Context Protocol](/wiki/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](/wiki/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](/wiki/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](/wiki/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]

| Feature | Description |
| --- | --- |
| AI bill processing | Incoming invoices in Mercury Bill Pay are parsed by AI, deduplicated, and sorted into a bill inbox by status and due date. |
| MCP server | A hosted Model Context Protocol server gives AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT read-only access to account context after an OAuth login; it has been offered through the Claude app directory. |
| Command-line interface | A terminal-native CLI lets developers query and operate Mercury accounts from a shell. |
| Mercury Command | An announced conversational interface intended to let customers approve payments, send invoices, and manage finances using natural language rather than navigating a dashboard. |

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](/wiki/andreessen_horowitz), which led its 2019 Series A, and has since raised progressively larger rounds. Its funding history, as reported, is summarized below.

| Round | Date | Amount | Post-money valuation | Lead investor |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Series B | 2021 | $120 million | ~$1.6 billion | Coatue (a16z, CRV among participants) [13][14] |
| Series C | March 2025 | $300 million | $3.5 billion | [Sequoia Capital](/wiki/sequoia_capital) [15] |
| Series D | May 2026 | $200 million | $5.2 billion | TCV [1][6] |

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](/wiki/brex) and [Ramp](/wiki/ramp) in corporate cards and spend management, [Stripe](/wiki/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