AI hits expense reports

Welcome to Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and for your trust. If you read this as a post on our site, please sign up here to receive it immediately in the future. Every week I check out the latest fintech news from the past week. This includes everything from funding rounds to trends, analysis of a specific space and opinions on a specific company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it and understand it so you stay up to date. — maria ann

Hello and welcome back. We finally have some energy back after the ice storm and I’m feeling better after a cold, but since I’m not working at full capacity yet, this bulletin will be a bit short.

Rebranding is not uncommon in the startup world, and the fintech space is no exception. They are especially common when companies change to adapt to external conditions. Last week, TripActions announced a rebrand and is now called Navan.

For example, I was not at all surprised by the news when TripActions transitioned from a travel expense management company to corporate card and business overhead management in March 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 CEO and co-founder Ariel Cohen told me that her earnings not only plummeted, but also bottomed out. . . Steel. At that point, executives decided to focus their efforts on the then-new Liquid offering, which seems to have worked quite well for the company. In October, amid continued growth, the company raised $154 million at a post-money valuation of $9.2 billion from its previous valuation of $7.5 billion, as well as $150 million in structured financing of Coatue. It then secured $400 million in credit lines from Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in December.

The rebranding is apparently more than just a name change. The company said it has now combined its travel, business and spending offerings into “one super app”. In addition, Navan, a combination of Navigate and Avant (or Forward), claims to be the first travel company to integrate OpenAI and ChatGPT APIs into its infrastructure and product suite.

The company says it is currently using generative AI technology to write, test and fix code with the goal of increasing operational efficiency and reducing overhead. Through Ava, Navan’s virtual assistant, travel managers can now personalize recommendations and increase traveler engagement, executives say. They also say that administrators can use the tool as personal assistants to perform tasks such as performing custom data analysis, providing detailed information on carbon emissions or ordering company cards for their company. Meanwhile, travelers can, for example, conduct travel research, resolve customer service issues, and even recommend an Indian restaurant near their London hotel.

A spokesperson for the company told me via email, “Program managers can ask Ava to report on travel and expense programs either through text, images, pdf, etc. for hotel reservations, we immediately pull them out of the hotel after a stay, categorize them the line items, check them against company policy and send them to the user so they are not needed [to] moving coins around to balance a leaf, a process I find quite painful.

Personally at TC, we wondered when generative AI is going to make a difference in fintech, so I’m intrigued by this TripAction shift, I mean Navan.

But I should point out that Navan wasn’t the only financial services company to announce it would integrate AI into its products.

Last week, TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez reported that Microsoft and American Express announced they’re teaming up to make AI work “to help with the frustrating and time-consuming task of filing and reviewing business expense reports.” She wrote: “The companies have agreed to extend their decades-long collaboration to develop solutions leveraging Microsoft cloud and AI technologies, starting with managing expense reports. According to Amex, the initial solution will use machine learning and AI to automate expense reports and approvals.” but uses Microsoft Cloud. You can read more about this contract here.

Fascinating! Hopefully, we’ll just hear more about the integration of AI into the world of financial services.

more layoffs

Last week, Dizer announced it would cut headcount by 19% and close its crypto unit. It also missed analysts’ estimates of revenue and profit. All this news caused the share price to fall dramatically. This is further proof that you buy now and pay later as space is at a premium. I plan to go into more detail next week, so stay tuned.

enthusiasm They also cut jobs, laying off 126 employees last week. Last May, TechCrunch reported that the HR tech unicorn, then valued at nearly $10 billion, raised an extension of its 2021 Series E funding round for a public offering.

Ironically, explains TC’s Natasha Mascarenhas, Gusto’s editor-in-chief wrote late last month about layoffs — and the upside awaiting small businesses looking for talent.

“Call me cynical, but a great company always chooses between dozens of employees. It’s just the nature of the animal. Small businesses should use this fact to their advantage.”

TechCrunch reached out to Gusto for comment and found that the cuts accounted for about 5% of the workforce. A spokesperson also told me: “All employees have been notified by email. Affected employees also received a text message notifying them of the email. An official, who prefers to remain anonymous, said the move came as a surprise given the company’s claims that it was in “sound financial health”. The same employee mentioned a toxic work culture, a sentiment echoed by some Ciego users.

weekly news

According to Axios, “Robin Hood announced that he would repurchase shares in Emergent Fidelity Technologies from Sam Bankman-Fried. This particular Robinhood exploit is currently in legal hell following the FTX implosion. Robinhood’s board of directors approved the purchase of “most or all” of the 55 million shares Emergent Fidelity Technologies acquired last year, the earnings report said on Wednesday. Emergent Fidelity Technologies has been formed to purchase a 7.6% stake in Robinhood in early 2022. However, the bet is now being challenged by a number of players.” Oh. I’m sure Robinhood didn’t expect this when they dropped those stocks.

Boloque Insurance offers compensation insurance for small business employees and announced that it has completed the transition to a “qualified full-stack carrier.” Pie will begin issuing its own insurance policies later this year, having recently acquired a nationally licensed insurance company (formerly American Insurance Company), now renamed Pie Insurance Company. Pie was last reported in September raising $315 million in Series D. With the launch of Ford Pro Insure, Pie also expanded into commercial auto insurance as an MGA for Ford Motor Credit Company.

From Manish Singh: “Fintech Kiss And Pay Us LazyPay is one of the apps that Indian Ministry of IT has blocked as part of its ongoing crackdown in New Delhi as New Delhi struggles to curb consumer data misuse and protect the integrity of the nation to protect.” More here.

from PayPal The stock rose again. The company announced during its fourth-quarter earnings announcement that CEO Dan Schulman plans to retire at the end of the year. But earnings beat analysts’ estimates. Last week we wrote about the company’s plans to lay off 2,000 employees.

In July 2022, Brazilian fintech Banco Alternativo launched Novücard, a credit card in Brazil with a “dynamic” credit limit, with the ability to automatically increase or decrease the limit based on usage and payment timeliness. A spokesperson for the company told me that novücard has grown to 150,000 new customers since its launch, “making it the fastest growing credit card in Brazil.” He adds: “Every day, up to 3,000 new customers receive a new novücard. The company expects this number to grow primarily through word of mouth, with the number of customers reaching 2 million by the end of 2023.” Fintech alt.bank, founded by American Brad Liebmann, employs 130 people, mainly in São Paulo and São Paulo Carlos. The company raised US$5.5 million in seed funding in May 2021.

Financing and M&A

Former CTO of Gemini launches fierce, powerful Finance Super app

New social investing platform Follow taps influencers to display their investing strategies

SUMA Wealth Acquires Coil to Close US Wealth Gap Christine reported last year: https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/21/suma-wealth-latinos-credit-gaming/

Sequoia Capital in Southeast Asia backs start-up Tazapay for cross-border payments

Investment platform Moonfare closes Series C renewal at $15 million

That’s it for this week. Thanks again for your patience and I hope to be with you again in full force next week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Kisses, Mary-Ann