Fintech Forecast: Momentum Builds With Big Deals, IPO-Ready Companies And More AI

Global venture funding to fintech and financial services startups last year rose 27% to total $51.8 billion, again topping pre-pandemic levels, per Crunchbase data, despite fewer funding deals.

On the heels of that momentum, investors in the space say they expect funding growth in 2026 to continue to concentrate into pre-IPO companies, for M&A to tick up, and to see robust investment into startups that add value to their fintech offerings with AI.

IPO momentum

The IPO dam finally seems to have broken in 2025, with several companies in the fintech space either going public or filing to do so last year. That could work in the funding environment’s favor going forward, since startup investment often follows the lead of public-market counterparts.

However, despite impressive debuts, shares have settled for many of the fintech companies that went public in 2025. Stablecoin issuer Circle, digital bank Chime, buy now, pay later plan provider Klarna, and enterprise expense management platform Navan are now all trading near or below their first-day closing prices.

Still, investors are eager to back pre-IPO companies such as Plaid, Ramp, Monzo or Revolut, according to Nik Milanovic, general partner of The Fintech Fund. “The story of fintech funding this year will probably be dominated by those $100M+ rounds as these companies get ready to go public,” he told Crunchbase News.

At the same time, he also predicts that “M&A will go crazy” in 2026 and that more companies will follow the lead set by Stripe and Revolut in providing tender offers to their employees in order to defer the decision to go public.

“Venture firms will both sell and buy into these rounds,” he said.

The AI effect

The AI conversation has shifted the VC mindset into bubble territory from a valuation perspective, yet the underlying growth and performance of companies in the age of AI is “astounding and unlike anything we’ve seen before,” even relative to 2020 and 2021, according to Amias Gerety, partner and head of U.S. investments at QED Investors.

“Absent a broader recession, we expect some pullback and return to rationality in the funding market,” he said, “but we believe funding in fintech and at the AI application layer should remain quite strong.”

Still, “we just don’t expect fintech funding to ever recover to the highs we saw in 2020 and 2021, when fintech and crypto were the hottest themes in venture,” Gerety said. “The tourists have moved on to chasing the AI-hype cycle.”

Jake Gibson of Better Tomorrow Ventures believes we’ll continue to see more AI companies across the fintech spectrum and that in general “there’s a lot of innovation going on in fintech right now.”

“The current administration has been much more friendly to fintech innovation, so we expect that in 2026 we’ll see more fintechs getting bank charters and vertically integrating,” he said.

“We’ll see more activity around stablecoins and crypto … and a lot of new products in the wealth stack.”

Who’s getting funding

Overall, “the best teams will increasingly pull ahead,” especially as startups building in AI and stablecoins scale faster than prior generations of fintech companies, according to Jordan Leites, vice president at Norwest Venture Partners.

“These businesses can move more quickly and reach meaningful adoption earlier in their lifecycles,” he wrote in an email interview.

Looking ahead, he expects stablecoins, agentic payments, and AI-native tools for financial services to command a disproportionate share of funding.

“These categories sit at the intersection of technological inflection points and clear customer demand,” he said, “which is where capital tends to follow.”