Welcome to this week’s edition. The financial landscape is undergoing a profound paradigm shift—one where legacy constraints are being aggressively dismantled by intelligent automation, tokenized infrastructure, and cross-border agility. In this issue, we dive into the deep currents driving this evolution.
Our expert analyst Samarth Shekhar breaks down four pioneering B2B fintech startups that are scaling financial services by creating entirely new product dimensions and distribution channels. From transforming paper-locked bond markets to orchestrating autonomous AI-to-AI corporate payments, these companies represent the immediate future of institutional partnership. Complementing this, Frank Schwab delivers a sharp, macro-level reality check on the inescapable global adoption of cryptocurrencies, proving that digital assets have officially transitioned into a permanent pillar of the global capital architecture.
We also bring you an exclusive, masterclass Q&A with Fabrizio Giabardo from Legion, who shares how they are completely rebuilding the rails of capital formation and emerging manager distribution with unmatched regulatory rigor. Finally, to fuel your strategic outlook, we round up the week’s most inspiring venture financing stories—highlighting the visionaries who have successfully secured the capital needed to turn disruptive ideas into market realities.
Read on, stay ahead, and get inspired.
A Q&A with Fabrizio Giabardo from Legion on Rebuilding the Rails of Capital Formation
The traditional mechanics of capital formation have long been guarded by legacy gatekeepers, leaving solo managers and emerging token issuers to navigate a slow, relationship-gated, and prohibitively expensive landscape.
Enter Legion, a groundbreaking infrastructure bridging the gap between crypto-native innovation and traditional private markets. Founded by Fabrizio Giabardo and Matt O’Connor, Legion combines deep algorithmic expertise with institutional-grade regulatory credibility to democratize access to high-quality, early-stage opportunities.
Backed by industry titans like VanEck and Coinbase Ventures, this powerhouse duo is actively rewriting the rules of distribution and underwriting. Dive into our exclusive interview to discover how they are building a genuine, trust-backed marketplace for the future of finance.
1-Tell us about yourself / your co-founder(s).
I’m Fabrizio, Director and co-founder of Legion. I started Legion to fix the parts of capital formation that are structurally broken: who gets access to quality deals, how managers raise capital, and how value is distributed among issuers, intermediaries, and investors.
Prior to Legion, I founded a DeFi protocol and held roles across consulting at Deloitte, startups, and product development. I am deeply motivated by expanding equitable access to early-stage opportunities.
My co-founder, Matt O’Connor, leads regulation and policy. He is the former lead algorithmic engineer for Bridgewater Associates, tokenomics researcher for the Stacks Foundation, and token economics lead for Status. His open source book, Tokenomics for Builders, has been positively reviewed by founders and VCs from Monad, Placeholder, Tensor, AllianceDAO, Galaxy Digital, and more.
Between us we cover the two things this business lives or dies on: deal and distribution mechanics on one side, and regulatory credibility on the other.
We’re backed by VanEck, Coinbase Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, GSR, Delphi Digital, and Cyber Fund.
Read more from the interview: Rebuilding Onchain Capital Formation
B2B FinTech @Scale Deal Highlights: Talwex, Range, Causa Prima & Warren.
Samarth Shekhar highlights startups that can help scale financial services by unlocking new customer segments or product offerings via B2B partnerships.
Talwex is building digital bond infrastructure for markets where issuance still runs on fax machines and legacy custodian systems- e.g. the SME and mid-market segment in France/ Europe that has historically been locked out of capital markets by the cost and complexity of traditional bond issuance. By automating compliance management, investor registry tracking, and settlement in a single workflow, Talwex could become the rails through which a regional bank or insurance company offers structured debt products to mid-market clients at a fraction of current cost. Banks could offer Talwex as a white-label issuance layer for corporate clients who need access to bond markets but don’t have a debt capital markets relationship. Insurers could automate issuance of short-duration bonds that match policyholder liabilities at scale.
Range is solving the control problem that every bank and corporate treasury faces the moment they touch stablecoins: fiat risk management tools were built for reversible, slower rails, and stablecoin transactions settle in seconds and cannot be unwound. Range‘s unified real-time ledger (UNIFY) and a pre-execution transaction control layer (PROTECT) allows banks to offer stablecoin treasury services to corporate clients. This could enable a new revenue stream for banks based on stablecoin-denominated treasury management and cross-border settlement for corporate customers, a market that is growing rapidly as multinationals seek to move cash between jurisdictions faster and cheaper than correspondent banking allows- without building the monitoring infrastructure from scratch.
Causa Prima is solving for the last mile gap of B2B payments: enabling two companies with different ERP or payment systems to negotiate, approve, and settle a disputed invoice in real time. As corporate finance teams adopt AI agents for procurement and accounts payable, every new enterprise on the platform also pulls in its suppliers and buyers, compounding growth for Causa Prima. I see opportunities for banks- who struggle to offer supply chain finance due to the manual coordination with thousands of suppliers- to offer early payment financing and working capital products on this platform. Causa Prima’s agent network makes dynamic discounting and supply chain finance programmatic, allowing banks to offer working capital products to SME suppliers at the point of invoice approval rather than waiting for a manual request.
Warren is addressing a structural failure in European employee benefits: the opacity of group insurance products means employees don’t engage with or optimise them. Warren’s employer-distributed model creates a new distribution channel for financial products that bypasses the retail bank branch — reaching employed, income-earning consumers at the moment they are most receptive to financial planning. Warren can become a white-label distribution and engagement layer: the insurer provides the regulated pension product, Warren provides the AI coaching, transparency, and engagement that drives higher contribution rates and stickier policyholder relationships. In markets where defined contribution pensions are growing and employers face pressure to offer meaningful benefits, this is a scalable wedge into a large and sticky customer base.
Read on for more on the founders and investors in the news last week. If you are building or backing “what’s next in finance” and want to spread the word with our network of 20K+, reach out to Samarth Shekhar or Frank Schwab.
Cryptocurrencies are no longer a niche experiment — they have become a globally relevant asset class
by Frank Schwab
At times, cryptocurrencies have surpassed $3 trillion in market capitalization, signaling that digital assets are now part of the financial landscape.
With more than 560 million people globally estimated to own cryptocurrencies, adoption has moved far beyond the early-adopter phase.
Read more here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7473611795497349120
VENTURE FINANCING
Monument Technology Closes £18 Million Fundraising Round
Monument Technology, the cloud-based, end-to-end Banking-Platform-as-a-Service (BPaaS) provider, has today (17th June 2026) announced the successful close of its seed funding round at more than £18 million. The company said the round exceeded its original £10 million target due to strong investor interest. Monument Technology has also confirmed it has commenced its Series A fundraising round, with commitments already secured at an increased share price and valuation. The funding will be used to support the continued scaling of the business in both the UK and internationally, further develop the platform, and make implementation simpler and faster for financial services clients.
Onchain Protocol Re Secures Strategic Investment from Coinbase Ventures
Re, the onchain protocol connecting real-world reinsurance capital with decentralised finance, has secured a strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures to accelerate its mission of bringing reinsurance capital onchain and opening one of the world’s largest, most traditional financial markets to a broader pool of investors. Re plans to use the proceeds to expand its underwriting capacity, grow its protocol team, and accelerate adoption of reUSD, its flagship deposit token. Re has written $500 million in premiums to date through Cover Re SPC, its licensed reinsurance entity, backing policies that cover close to a million U.S. households.
Source: https://re.xyz/insights/coinbase-invests
Nance Raises €1 Million to Automate Financial Administration for SMEs
Nance, a Dutch fintech that automates financial administration for SMEs using AI, has raised €1 million in a first investment round. Investors include Chris Zadeh (Ohpen), Kalo Bagijn (BinckBank, Brand New Day), Kees Koolen (Booking.com), Dennis Dijkstra (Flow Traders), and members of the founding team of Adyen. The platform integrates with tools companies already use — such as Exact Online and Google Workspace — and accepts natural language commands via a chat interface. Since its April 2026 launch, over 30 companies are using Nance to automate their financial administration with zero churn.
Franklin, a Danish Fintech with a Payment Card for E-commerce, Raises €1.6M Seed Led by True Collective for Agentic Finance
Franklin, a Danish fintech that builds a payment card and finance platform for e-commerce merchants, raised €1.6M (DKK 12M) of seed funding led by True Collective. Its card targets high ad spenders with limits meant to keep campaigns running through peaks like Black Friday, plus 0.5% uncapped cashback on ad, software, and operations spending. Franklin’s AI already collects and reconciles receipts from the ad and software platforms merchants use, including Meta, Google, and TikTok, automating much of their bookkeeping. Proceeds will deepen Franklin’s AI and grow its engineering and commercial teams as it scales beyond Denmark into the Netherlands.
Strobe — $2.55M | Early Stage VC | Newark, NJ
No public announcement found. PitchBook description: Developer of an open marketplace protocol designed to facilitate decentralised verification of data credentials and attestations. Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Hash3.
Source: PitchBook (June 15, 2026)
Aiffin — $3.63M | Equity Crowdfunding | Paris, France
No public announcement found. PitchBook description: Operator of a digital vehicle leasing platform intended for vehicle acquisition and lease management. No investors disclosed.
Source: PitchBook (June 16, 2026)
Braven — $4.6M | Seed Round | San Francisco, CA
No public announcement found. PitchBook description: Developer of an AI-powered document processing platform designed to automate and accelerate financial workflows. Investors: AAC Capital, Aito Capital, Angeles Investors, Broom Ventures, Carao Ventures, Collide Capital, Fiat Ventures.
Source: PitchBook (June 16, 2026)
Local Loan Servicing Startup Thrive Financial Closes on $7M Capital Raise
Thrive Financial, a Richmond, VA-based fintech connecting home improvement contractors with bank lenders to finance large projects like pools, HVAC, and roofing, has raised $7 million. The company was co-founded by former Capital One and GreenSky executives. Thrive has approximately 850 active contractors using the platform, and has originated about 1,300 loans totalling roughly $118 million since its launch. Investors include Citi Ventures, Flintlock Capital, BlueSky Capital Management, 1st & Main Growth Partners, and Motivate Venture Capital.
RDC Raises $7M to Issue Depositary Receipts on Digital and Alternative Assets
Receipts Depositary Corporation (RDC) closed a $7M oversubscribed seed round led by LiveOak Ventures to scale a regulated depositary receipt framework for digital and alternative assets. The round included Hivemind Capital Partners, OTC Markets Group, GTS, Onigiri Capital, and Redbeard Ventures — a mix that spans crypto-native and traditional market infrastructure. RDC outlined three immediate priorities: accelerating development of next-generation DR products across more asset categories, deepening relationships across the DR ecosystem including banks, broker-dealers, market makers, custodians, and exchanges, and continuing to scale its team.
Source: https://cryptorank.io/news/feed/rdc-raises-7-millions
Range Raises $8.3M Series A to Unify Treasury, Risk and Compliance Across Stablecoins and Fiat
[SixThirty portfolio company] Range raises $8.3M Series A to build the platform for companies operating across stablecoins and fiat rails, with traditional fintech funds TX Ventures and SixThirty among the backers. Range, the platform for companies operating across stablecoins and fiat, has raised $11M to date. The round was oversubscribed. The product is organised into two parts: UNIFY, the system of record across all sources including digital assets and bank balances; and PROTECT, the control layer that screens transactions for risk, compliance, or business policy violations before the money moves. Range protects more than $30B in customer assets and tracks 99.41% of all stablecoin payments across 200+ networks.
Source: https://rwatimes.substack.com/p/range-raises-83m-series-a-to-unify
Causa Prima Raises $10 Million for AI Agent Network in B2B Finance
Causa Prima, based in Madrid and Munich, has emerged from stealth with a $10 million pre-seed round led by Creandum, with support from KFund, HelloWorld, Angel Invest, and angel investors from Qonto, Pennylane, SAP, ING, SoFi, LIDL, and DeepMind. The company is building the world’s first agent-to-agent network for B2B financial transactions, enabling AI agents on both sides of a transaction to handle invoicing, dispute resolution, and payment-term negotiations automatically in real time. Founders include Maex Ament, co-founder of Taulia (acquired by SAP), and Henrik Gebbing, co-founder of Finoa. The company claims this is the largest pre-seed round ever raised by a company in Spain.
Source: https://techfundingnews.com/causa-prima-10m-pre-seed-creandum-b2b-payments-ai-agents-network/
Warren Closes €10M Seed Round for Pension Platform
Warren, a Ghent-based WealthTech platform operating its own regulated pension fund and offering AI-powered financial coaching to employees, has closed a €10m seed funding round led by Motive Partners (venture arm), with participation from F Capital, Entourage, Syndicate One, and 100IN. The funding will be used to enhance Warren’s platform for managing workplace pensions, scale the team by approximately thirty additional employees, and prepare for expansion into other European markets, targeting 100,000 employees by 2028. The median supplementary pension reserve for Belgian workers aged 56–65 is under €10,000 — the structural gap Warren is designed to close.
Source: https://techfundingnews.com/warren-10m-seed-belgium-pension-fintech-10000-retiree-savings/
Flagright’s Series A Bets on AI-Led Compliance Shift
Flagright, an AI-native financial crime compliance platform, has secured $12.5m in a Series A funding round led by Infinity Ventures, with participation from Sella Bank and continued support from existing backers Frontline and Y Combinator. The capital will be deployed to expand explainable AI capabilities across compliance operations and grow Flagright’s presence in the US market. The company works with over 100 banks and fintechs across 35 countries and reports up to 93% fewer false positives and 80% lower compliance costs versus fragmented legacy tools. CEO Baran Ozkan: “The financial crime compliance stack is being rebuilt, and Flagright is the company to define the operating system layer for this category.”
Source: https://fintech.global/2026/06/17/flagrights-series-a-bets-on-ai-led-compliance-shift/
American Perpetuals Exchange Raises $30 Million as It Pursues Dual CFTC, SEC Oversight
American Perpetuals Exchange Corporation (APEC), founded by 22-year-old Theodore Gillibrand, son of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), has raised $30 million led by Lux Capital at a $300 million valuation. The platform plans to file for a Designated Contract Market license with joint CFTC and SEC oversight to list perpetual futures contracts on single-name equities and stock indices — not cryptocurrencies. APEC also intends to apply for a Derivatives Clearing Organization licence to clear transactions in-house. Theodore Gillibrand: “It is clear that the future of these markets is not in offshore and unregulated foreign entities but rather in a regulated and institutional American company.”
Flutterwave Reaches $3.2bn Valuation with Series E Funding Round
Flutterwave has secured a strategic investment from Ripple as part of its Series E funding round, lifting its valuation to $3.2 billion. The company did not disclose the size of the investment, but confirmed it has now raised over $500 million in funding to date. The partnership will integrate Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin and XRP Ledger into Flutterwave’s payment infrastructure to support faster settlement, liquidity management, remittances, and cross-border payments. Flutterwave claims its infrastructure has processed more than one billion transactions totalling over $50 billion. The company recently secured a Nigerian banking licence following its acquisition of open banking provider Mono.
Every edition of this newsletter is, at its core, a map of where capital and infrastructure are converging.
This week that convergence is particularly sharp. Bond issuance is being automated for markets that still run on fax machines. Stablecoin treasury tools are being built for corporate finance teams who need controls that move at the speed of settlement. AI agents are handling invoice disputes that once required weeks of manual back-and-forth. And a pension platform in Ghent is quietly closing the gap between what European workers are promised and what they actually retire with.
The builders doing this work are not waiting for permission from legacy institutions. They are, as Legion’s Fabrizio Giabardo puts it, building the rails first and letting the volume follow.
We’ll be watching closely — and reporting back next week.