Valuation Doubles to $1.2 Billion in Six Months as Flex Targets Stablecoin + AI Integration

Zaid Rahman leads Flex in creating a financial ecosystem for medium-sized enterprises, with its valuation skyrocketing to $1.2 billion.

Written by: Grok

Assisted by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

On July 14, Flex completed a $70 million Series B1 funding round, led by Halo Fund. Based on the financing terms, Flex's valuation has doubled to $1.2 billion in just seven months. This funding will directly support its global business expansion, particularly the rollout of the Flex Global platform.

Flex has maintained a rapid pace of financing. In December 2025, the company completed a $60 million Series B funding round, led by Portage Ventures, with participation from Titanium Ventures, Wellington Management, Crosslink Capital, Spice, Florida Funders, and others, at a valuation of approximately $600 million.

In July 2026, just six months later, Flex announced another $70 million Series B1 funding round, led by Halo Fund, with participation from Portage Ventures, Wellington, Crosslink Capital, 53 Stations, Titanium Ventures, Spice, Florida Funders, and others. Following this round, the company's valuation rose to approximately $1.2 billion, with total equity financing reaching about $180 million and total debt financing around $300 million.

Additionally, Halo Fund, which led this round of financing, is a new venture capital fund established in 2025, co-founded by Ryan Smith, founder of Qualtrics and owner of the NBA's Utah Jazz and NHL's Utah Grizzlies, and Ryan Sweeney, a general partner at Accel. The fund is headquartered in Sandy, Utah, and has an office in Palo Alto, California, managing approximately $1 billion.

Flex positions itself to provide AI-native private banking services for medium-sized high-net-worth business owners, whose annual revenues typically range from $3 million to $200 million, primarily in construction, wholesale, and import-export sectors. Their businesses often span multiple entities, currencies, and jurisdictions, making cross-border cash flow a norm.

There are about 350,000 such business owners in the U.S., contributing 40% of private sector wages; globally, there are approximately 3 million in this demographic, at the core of private economic activity. Traditional financial services often separate business accounts from personal finances, requiring business owners to manage over 20 different tools, dealing with multiple layers of fees and delayed settlements. Flex was born to address this group, aiming to integrate business and personal finances into a unified platform, making cash flow as smooth as local operations.

Founders and Team

Flex founder Zaid Rahman dropped out of Columbia University to join the Thiel Fellowship program, becoming one of the Thiel Fellows, and subsequently founded multiple companies (including Flex), which is a significant part of his identity as a serial entrepreneur.

Note: The Thiel Fellowship program was founded in 2011 by renowned investor Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal). The program selects about 20 young talents aged 18-22 each year, providing $100,000 in funding (over two years) to encourage them to drop out and start businesses or engage in innovative projects instead of continuing traditional university education. Selected individuals are called Thiel Fellows, a title that holds high recognition in Silicon Valley and the Web3 community, often seen as a mark of "anti-traditional education and high entrepreneurial potential."

Previously, Zaid Rahman founded an educational software company and an AI knowledge technology startup called Volley, which received support from JPMorgan and Mark Zuckerberg, aiming to improve computer understanding of knowledge. His family's experience in traditional construction business allowed him to personally feel the financial pain points of medium-sized business owners—multinational projects, multi-currency settlements, and cash flow pressures. These experiences directly shaped the product direction of Flex.

Rahman has focused on the Flex project since 2020, emphasizing the "Delta 4" product philosophy, which seeks to significantly surpass existing solutions in experience. He has strict requirements for recruitment and team building, emphasizing long-term cultural fit. After the latest financing in 2026, the team plans to expand from the current 110 people to over 200 by the end of the year, focusing on adding talent in global compliance, AI engineering, and cross-border products. Resources brought in by investors like Halo Fund also provide additional support for team expansion and market reach.

Steady Accumulation of Product and Market Foundation

Flex's growth trajectory is clearly visible. In 2022, the team completed its first product tests and early recruitment; in 2023, it launched the Flex credit card, quickly surpassing $1 million in transaction volume and completed the acquisition of Ghost Financial, with total equity and debt financing reaching $120 million that year; in 2024, it successively launched Flex Banking, global payment, and B2B payment capabilities; in 2025, transaction volume surpassed $1 billion, and it introduced bill payment and AP automation features. In July 2026, with the latest round of financing completed, Flex officially accelerated the expansion of Flex Global to over 170 countries.

After the latest financing, the company's annualized revenue grew threefold compared to the previous round, with annualized total payment volume exceeding $10 billion, of which stablecoin transaction volume has contributed over $1 billion, with customers averaging more than four products used. These figures reflect that platform stickiness is rapidly increasing, providing a solid foundation for global expansion.

Integrated Financial Operating System Mechanism

Flex's product mechanism revolves around a "full financial operating system." It integrates five major pillars: private credit, commercial finance, personal finance, payments, and ERP systems, achieving automated decision-making and operations through AI agents.

The core product, Flex Global, uses stablecoins as the backend payment track, allowing users to enjoy instant cross-border settlement experiences without directly operating wallets. The platform supports stablecoin payments and wallet services in over 100 countries, with cross-border transfers completed in minutes, while traditional SWIFT or wire transfers often take 1 to 5 business days, with fees ranging from 1% to 6%. The stablecoin track reduces costs to well below 1% and can lock in foreign exchange rates in real-time.

Multi-currency accounts are another highlight. Flex Global covers 76 countries and supports 32 currencies, including USD, RMB, INR, MXN, and more. Business owners can hold, send, and receive local currencies on the same platform while obtaining institutional-level USD accounts, facilitating access to global reserve currencies for foreign business owners. On this basis, the platform further launched a global card feature, allowing flexible issuance of credit cards across entities and regions; at the same time, private credit solutions have expanded to over 20 countries. All features are seamlessly integrated into a single intuitive dashboard, connecting vendor directories, approval processes, and data sources, avoiding the hassle of business owners repeatedly switching between multiple systems.

AI is the core engine for efficiency improvement in Flex Global. It can quickly integrate and analyze business financial statements, bank statements, ERP system data, and industry-specific tools (such as Procore data in the construction industry). Through automated credit assessment models, Flex has significantly compressed the traditional bank's credit approval cycle of 90 days to about 2 days. Previously, Flex's own approval process also took 40-50 days, but now AI technology has significantly sped it up. Notably, stablecoins are not merely a technical concept displayed at the front end of the system, but operate as backend infrastructure. They function like a fast lane on a highway, where users do not need to understand the underlying "road surface material" but only experience the speed and convenience of transfers.

Practical Scenarios and Differentiated Positioning

Flex's actual use cases directly fall into the daily operational scenarios of medium-sized business owners. These business owners often need to allocate funds and resources across multiple countries, where traditional methods create significant friction, while Flex Global transforms stablecoin tracks and AI tools into perceivable efficiency improvements.

The experience of business owners in the construction industry is equally prominent. Long customer payment cycles are a common issue in this field. Flex's Net-60 credit card provides 60 days of interest-free floating funds, allowing businesses to maintain stable cash flow for material procurement and labor payments. AI has reduced credit approval speed from the previous 40 to 50 days to about 2 days. It comprehensively analyzes business financial statements, bank statements, ERP data, and records from industry-specific tools like Procore, quickly providing decisions. As a result, business owners can seize growth opportunities more flexibly without repeatedly waiting at bank approval windows.

In the competitive landscape, Flex's positioning has formed a clear distinction. It is often compared to Brex, a well-known fintech company in the U.S. that provides corporate credit cards and expense management services primarily to tech startups. However, Brex focuses more on tech startups, while Flex targets medium-sized business owners with annual revenues between $3 million and $200 million. The core needs of these business owners are cross-border cash flow and unified finances across jurisdictions, which Flex Global is built around.

Market trends also support Flex. The B2B transaction volume of stablecoins has grown by 733% in the past year, with an annual payment scale reaching approximately $390 billion. Visa's annualized stablecoin settlement run rate (the annualized scale projected linearly based on recent short-term performance, such as the last quarter or month) reached $7 billion in April 2026, a 50% increase quarter-over-quarter. The regulatory environment is also favorable, with the U.S. GENIUS Act and the EU MiCA providing frameworks for stablecoin issuance. Flex transforms these infrastructures into tools that business owners can use daily, rather than confronting them with complex technologies or wallet operations.

Flex currently has no plans for native token issuance or a public token economics model. Its core operations rely on existing stablecoin infrastructure, serving cross-border needs as backend payment tracks rather than driving the ecosystem through its own tokens.

Balancing Considerations in Development

Flex needs to balance several challenges amid rapid development. The regulatory environment is a primary factor, as the stablecoin track relies on frameworks like the GENIUS Act and MiCA, and global expansion involves multi-jurisdictional licensing, anti-money laundering, and sanctions screening; even with accelerated settlements, the end-to-end process still needs to handle foreign exchange, reconciliation, and reporting, and regulatory adjustments may affect the pace. Credit business also requires caution, as private credit like Net-60 relies on AI approvals, which, while significantly speeding up, are influenced by industry cycles on medium-sized businesses' cash flow, making stability crucial for the platform as a fintech company dependent on banking partners. Nevertheless, through the latest financing and the rollout of Flex Global, Flex has demonstrated a clear path. It transforms stablecoins into backend infrastructure, AI into decision speed, and multi-currency accounts into daily convenience, providing a unified financial ecosystem for construction, wholesale, and import-export business owners.

Completion Notes and References

• Forbes Special Report
• Company Press Release
• Flex Official Website (Product and Company Information)