Venture capital

The New Jersey bank has been informally funding startups for more than a year. Now it has established Cross River Digital Ventures, which will focus on backing fintechs the bank wants to work with or ones that it feels will benefit the broader industry.

More than 97% of venture backing goes go white-owned startups. Firms like Mendoza Ventures, Chingona Ventures and MaC Venture Capital are stepping in to support underserved entrepreneurs.

The card brand has added a dedicated lane to its startup program to address the venture funding gap for race and gender. Overall, less than 3% of VC funding goes to startups with Black or Latinx founders.

The Curql Fund, an investor in upstart technology companies, is trying to help credit unions build relationships with cutting-edge firms.

Chargebee, a startup that helps enterprises with subscription billing and revenue management, raised $125 million in funding and boosted its valuation to $1.4 billion, reaching so-called unicorn status for the first time.

The financial-technology firm Plaid is close to a new round of funding at a valuation of about $13 billion, almost three months after scrapping its sale to Visa, according to people familiar with the matter.

Large U.S. banks are directing their venture capital dollars to fintechs in capital markets, wealth management and "future-proofing."

Capital One Financial led a $170 million investment in the startup Hopper as the financial giant seeks to make a deeper push into travel.

MissionOG spots opportunities among firms that provide pandemic-era automation and a route for legacy financial institutions to compete with challenger banks and fintechs.

Rapid changes in payments and regulations have blown open the door to new ideas, creating frontiers for fintech investors. Javier Perez hopes three decades of experience will help him have an early read on startups.