Brex

Last updated
Brex Inc.
Type Private
Industry Fintech
FoundedJanuary 3, 2017;6 years ago (January 3, 2017)
Founders
  • Henrique Dubugras
  • Pedro Franceschi
HeadquartersNo headquarters [1]
Key people
  • Henrique Dubugras
  • (Co-CEO)
  • Pedro Franceschi
  • (Co-CEO)
Number of employees
1,100 (2022) [2]
Website brex.com

Brex Inc. is an American financial service and technology company that offers business credit cards and cash management accounts to technology companies. [3] Brex cards are business charge cards, which require at least $50,000 in a bank account if professionally invested, if not with $100,000 to open, and cardholders who default won't damage their personal credit or assets. [4] Emigrant Bank issues the Brex cards. [5]

Contents

History

Brex was founded by Brazilian entrepreneurs Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi on January 3, 2017. They had previously founded an online payments company, Pagar.me, before selling it to Stone. [6] [7] [8]

Brex did not start as a fintech startup but rather as a VR startup, however the founders pivoted the company three weeks into Y Combinator's 12-week accelerator program. [9]

In February 2021, the company announced a submission application with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions (UDFI) to establish an industrial bank named Brex Bank, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Brex. According to TechCrunch , the subsidiary appointed a former Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) executive as CEO. [5]

In April 2022, Brex launched Brex Empower, a financial software platform to help people comply with their employers' expense policies. [10] In June 2022, Brex exited the small and midsize businesses (SMB) market, shifting the company's focus to serving enterprise customers. [11] In August 2022, Brex named Doug Adamic as the company's new Chief Revenue Officer. [12]

According to CNBC, Brex received billions of dollars in deposits from SVB customers on March 9, 2023—a day prior to SVB's collapse. [13]

Growth

Brex Inc. is backed by Peter Thiel, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, DST Global, Kleiner Perkins, Lone Pine Capital, and Greenoaks. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [5]

Funding history[ citation needed ]
DateFunding RoundMoney RaisedPre-Money Valuation
Mar 20, 2017Pre Seed Round$120kN/A
Apr 1, 2017Series A$7MN/A
Jun 19, 2018Series B$50MN/A
Oct 5, 2018Series C$125M$975M
Apr 16, 2019Debt Financing$100MN/A
Jun 11, 2019Series C$100M$2.5B
Dec 11, 2019Debt Financing$200MN/A
May 19, 2020Series C$150M$2.9B
Apr 26, 2021Series D$425M$7.4B

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Thiel</span> German-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist (born 1967)

Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. As of June 2023, Thiel had an estimated net worth of $9.7 billion and was ranked 213th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Levchin</span> Ukrainian-born American software engineer

Maksymilian Rafailovych "Max" Levchin is a Ukrainian-American software engineer and businessman. In 1998, he co-founded the company that eventually became PayPal. Levchin made contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts and was the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a CAPTCHA challenge response human test.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David O. Sacks</span> South African American entrepreneur

David Oliver Sacks is an entrepreneur, author, and investor in internet technology firms. He is general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Previously, Sacks was the founding COO and product leader of PayPal and founder/CEO of Yammer. In 2016, he became interim CEO of Zenefits for 10 months. In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb. He is a co-host of the podcast All-In.

Founders Fund is a San Francisco based venture capital firm formed in 2005 and has roughly $11 billion in total assets under management as of 2022. Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Palantir Technologies, and early investor in Facebook. The firm’s partners, including Peter Thiel, Ken Howery and Brian Singerman, have been founders, early employees and investors at companies including PayPal, Google, Palantir Technologies, and SpaceX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luke Nosek</span> Polish-born American entrepreneur; co-founder of PayPal

Luke Nosek is a Polish-American entrepreneur, notable for being a co-founder of PayPal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stripe, Inc.</span> Irish-American payment technology company

Stripe, Inc. is an Irish-American multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.

Wise is a UK-based foreign exchange financial technology company founded by Estonian businessmen Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus in January 2011. Wise specializes in cross-border payment transfers. As of 2023, it offers three main products: Wise Account, Wise Business, and Wise Platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Silicon Valley Bank</span> American commercial bank

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is a commercial bank division of First Citizens BancShares. The bank was previously the primary subsidiary of SVB Financial Group, a publicly traded bank holding company that had offices in 15 U.S. states and over a dozen international jurisdictions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LendUp</span> American financial technology company

LendUp was an American online direct lender. It offered payday loans, installment loans, and credit cards to consumers with low credit scores using publicly available data to assess creditworthiness. The company referred to its customers as “the emerging middle class.” LendUp also issued credit cards in partnership with Tom Steyer's Beneficial State Bank.

Valar Ventures is a US-based venture capital fund founded by Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald and Peter Thiel in 2010. Historically, the majority of the firm's investments have been in technology startups based outside of Silicon Valley, including in Europe, the UK, the US and Canada. Valar Ventures originally spun out of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's global parent company based in San Francisco, and is now headquartered near Madison Square in Manhattan. The firm's namesake is the Valar of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, who are god-like immortal spirits that chose to enter the mortal world to prepare it for their living creations.

Revolut is a global neobank and financial technology company that offers banking services. Headquartered in London, it was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It offers accounts featuring currency exchange, debit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing "vaults", stock trading, crypto, commodities, and other services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Podium (company)</span> American software company

Podium is a private technology company headquartered in Lehi, Utah that develops cloud-based software related to messaging, customer feedback, online reviews, selling products, and requesting payments.

Zapier is a product developed by Zapier Inc. that allows end users to integrate the web applications they use and automate workflows. As of 2021, it connects to more than 4,000 apps, with free and paid plans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qonto (neobank)</span> French financial services company

Qonto is a French online payment institution for freelancers and SMEs. The financial technology company was founded in 2016 and the initial product was launched in July 2017 in France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drip Capital</span> Digital trade finance company

Drip Capital is a digital trade finance company based in Palo Alto, California. The company offers working capital to small and medium sized companies engaged in cross-border trade in India, Mexico and the United States using technology and data analytics.

Tenderd is software for heavy industries to manage their equipment and fleet. Using the technology companies can increase their operational efficiency, safety, and reduce environmental footprint. The company is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Upgrade, Inc. is an American neobank founded in 2016. It has raised $600 million in equity funding and made over $10 billion in loans since its launch in 2017. Upgrade is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in Phoenix, Arizona and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The company offers credit and banking products to consumers and delivers fixed-rate credit cards and loans. The company's other services include credit monitoring and education tools.

Flutterwave is a Nigerian fintech company that provides a payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment service providers across the continent.

GoCardless is a fintech company that specialises in bank payments including recurring payments, Direct Debit processing and Open Banking. GoCardless is headquartered in London.

Mercury is a financial technology company that provides customers with banking services. The company is not a bank, but works with banking service providers to provide bank accounts and other financial services. The company was founded in 2017 in San Francisco, California.

References

  1. ↑ Calvey, Mark (19 August 2021). "Exclusive: Brex joins Coinbase in embracing no-headquarters model". American City Business Journals.
  2. ↑ "Brex is 'less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers'". 17 June 2022.
  3. ↑ "Brex Small Business Card: If Square Could Work, Is There Potential Here?". PaymentsJournal. 2018-06-19. Retrieved 2019-11-19.
  4. ↑ "Home". upgradepoints.com. Retrieved 19 December 2019.
  5. 1 2 3 Azevedo, Mary Ann. "Brex applies for bank charter, taps former Silicon Valley Bank exec as CEO of Brex Bank". TechCrunch.
  6. ↑ Schoenberg, Gregg (8 November 2018). "Charge card startup Brex aims for decacorn success" . TechCrunch.
  7. ↑ "StoneCo. Ltd. Form F-1". www.sec.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-19.
  8. ↑ "StoneCo. Ltd. Form 6-K/A". www.sec.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-19.
  9. ↑ Rudgeair, Peter (5 October 2018). "The College Dropouts Who Rode Credit Cards Into The Billion-Dollar Startup Club" . The Wall Street Journal.
  10. ↑ Azevedo, Mary Ann (2022-04-13). "Fintech Brex bets big on software, lands DoorDash as a customer". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
  11. ↑ Lawler, Ryan (2022-06-17). "Scoop: Brex exiting SMB market to focus on enterprise customers". Axios. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
  12. ↑ Brex. "Brex Names Doug Adamic as Chief Revenue Officer". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
  13. ↑ Son, Hugh (March 10, 2023). "Fintech startup Brex got billions of dollars in Silicon Valley Bank deposits Thursday, source says". CNBC.
  14. ↑ "About Us - Brex". brex.com. Archived from the original on 2023-03-07. Retrieved 2023-03-12. Brex is backed by Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins, DST Global, PayPal co-founders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, Lone Pine Capital, and fintech specialist Ribbit Capital.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  15. ↑ "CFOs Will Get Their Own AI Chatbot as Part of Brex Project". Bloomberg.com. 2023-03-07. Retrieved 2023-03-12. Brex, a six-year-old startup backed by Tiger Global and PayPal Holdings Inc. co-founders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, is valued at more than $12 billion and counts companies such as DoorDash Inc. and Airbnb Inc. among its clients.
  16. ↑ Kruppa, Miles (2021-04-02). "Publicity-shy VC firm Greenoaks has bumper year". Financial Times. Retrieved 2021-10-26.
  17. ↑ Insider. "Brex's $57 Million Pitch Deck | Insider". www.businessinsider.com. Retrieved 2023-03-12. Brex already has more than 1,000 customers signed up with the help of backing from investors including PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, early Facebook investor Yuri Milner, former Visa CEO Carl Pascarella, and esteemed startup incubator Y Combinator.
  18. ↑ "Fintech Startup Brex Collects $50 Million Series B". WSJ. Retrieved 2023-03-12.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.