Ant’s $1.2 Billion A Round Tops This Weeks Fundings And Acquisitions
Ant’s $1.2 Billion Series A
The financing supports expansion of its global payments and financial services business and positions the Alibaba-backed fintech unit for a potential future IPO. Participants included Ant Group and Alibaba Group.
Parafin’s $300M forward-flow funding agreement
Parafin recently surpassed 50,000 funded businesses and inked partnerships with Goldman Sachs, EverBank, First Citizens, and Cross River.
Augustus raises $180M at $1B valuation
It seeks to build a U.S. bank from scratch and is backed by Tiger Global, QED, Hummingbird, and fintech founders including Nubank, Ramp and Circle. The goal is to give banks and fintechs worldwide direct access to U.S. dollar accounts and payment rails, pending final approval of its national bank charter.
The list of fintech and AI founders backing Augustus includes David Velez (Nubank), Karim Atiyeh (Ramp), Sean Neville (Circle), Alex Bouaziz (Deel), Victor Cardenas (Slash), Alan Chang (CRO Revolut), Balaji Srinivasan (CTO Coinbase), Farooq Malik (Rain), Gavin Uberti (Etched), Victor Riparbelli (Synthesia), Alexander Rinke (Celonis), Jamie Cox (Fluidstack), and Jan Oberhauser (n8n). Additional investors include Soma Capital, Road Capital Management, CMT Digital, Brevan Howard Digital, and Variant.
Cisco joins Zafran $130M round
Cisco Investments joins existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Menlo Ventures, PSP Growth, Vintage Investment Partners, and Amex Ventures.
Built on its AI-native Exposure Graph, Zafran’s Threat Exposure Management platform provides visibility into attack paths and transforms existing security controls into a coordinated system of action.
Cashea attracts $100M across two rounds
It includes a previously undisclosed $40 million Series A led by Spice Expeditions, which closed in March 2026, $20 million in equity and $20 million in debt by Architect Capital, and a $60 million Series B led by FinSight Ventures, with participation from Spice Expeditions, Endeavor Catalyst and a group of U.S. endowments, global and Latin American investors.
Through the app, a shopper buys online or scans a QR code in a store, makes a first payment, and settles the rest in equal installments every two weeks, at zero interest.
Natural $30M Series A
Natural is building the foundational payments stack for AI agents.
It was led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner, with continued participation from all major investors. Natural’s total funding exceeds $40 million. The round was supported by Aarmaan Ali and Baris Akis, founders of Human Capital; Ramtin Naimi, founder of Abstract; Nichole Wischoff, founder of Wischoff Ventures; Darragh Buckley, CEO of Increase; Pablo Palafox, CEO of HappyRobot; Paul Klein IV, CEO of Browserbase; Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Notion; Henri Stern and Max Segall, CEO and COO of Privy; Pete Koomen, GP of Y Combinator; Dylan Babbs, CTO of Profound; Art Levy, CBO of Brex; Jake and Logan Paul, GPs of Antifund; and others.
Paytech Cordant confirms $8M seed round
It was co-led by Motive Partners and Oak HC/FT. Cordant ingests signals from payment rails, bank accounts, ledgers, compliance and risk systems, and normalizes them into a shared event model.
Ripple invests in Notabene
Notabene and Ripple will collaborate to expand enterprise stablecoin payments by integrating Ripple USD (RLUSD) into Notabene Flow and exploring how trusted payment authorization can complement Ripple Payments. Notabene Flow is Notabene’s B2B stablecoin payments platform that enables payment coordination and authorization capabilities.
