Plaid Inc.
Market Data Current As Of: September 12, 2026
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Plaid Inc.
Compare market positioning with top industry peers
Explore Plaid
Core profile pages, annual revenue records, and related research hubs for this company.
Company History
Founded 2013 in San Francisco, California, United States
Plaid was founded in 2013 by Duke University classmates Zachary Perret and William Hockey. The pair originally set out to build consumer budgeting and bookkeeping software called Silver, but quickly realized that their biggest obstacle was not designing user interfaces, but connecting to banks. In 2012, syncing an app with a checking account required clunky, fragile screen-scraping tools that broke constantly whenever a bank updated its website. Recognizing that every other fintech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley faced the exact same agonizing problem, Perret and Hockey abandoned their consumer app and spent eighteen months coding Plaid: a developer-first REST API that abstracted away the archaic plumbing of thousands of regional banks. Operating from a cramped office in San Francisco, Plaid caught lightning in a bottle by signing early breakout startups Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase, sparking an unprecedented golden age of consumer fintech innovation. In 2012, in an office at Bain & Company, two young consultants—Zach Perret and William Hockey—were losing their minds. In their spare time, they were trying to build consumer budgeting software, but every attempt to connect to an American bank hit a brick wall. Legacy aggregators took months to respond, charged tens of thousands of dollars, and relied on fragile software that broke weekly. Perret and Hockey realized that the app they were building was irrelevant; what the world desperately needed was an open API for banking. They quit their lucrative consulting jobs and moved to San Francisco. William Hockey spent twelve months writing code to connect to thousands of banks, while Zach Perret designed modern REST APIs. In 2013, they debuted Plaid Link. That single embedded widget unlocked the digital financial revolution, giving over 100 million people the freedom to connect their money to the modern software world.
Zach Perret is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Plaid Inc. While working at Bain, Perret partnered with William Hockey to build consumer financial software, discovering firsthand that connecting to American banks was nearly impossible. In 2013, Perret and Hockey founded Plaid in San Francisco to solve this fundamental infrastructure bottleneck. Under Perret's visionary, resolute leadership, Plaid survived a brutal DOJ antitrust challenge that scuttled its $5.3B sale to Visa, emerging as an independent $13.4 billion technology titan generating over $300 million in annual revenue. Perret is widely recognized as the defining architect of the American open banking movement. Perret's resolute, strategic leadership made him the defining corporate statesman of the American open banking movement. Surviving a high-stakes DOJ antitrust trial and the dramatic cancellation of the $5.3B Visa merger, Perret rallied Plaid to independent greatness, doubling its valuation to $13.4 billion, championing consumer financial data rights under CFPB Section 1033, and scaling Plaid past $300M ARR ahead of an initial public offering.
William Hockey is the co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Plaid. An extraordinary software systems architect, Hockey personally wrote the original code that connected to thousands of American banks. At Plaid, Hockey designed Plaid Link, architected the reverse-engineering engines that parsed disparate banking data, and built the security infrastructure that safeguarded millions of consumer credentials. After stepping down from day-to-day operations at Plaid, Hockey co-founded Column, a nationally chartered developer bank, while continuing to serve on Plaid's Board of Directors. At Plaid, Hockey's extraordinary systems programming mastery was the technological engine that unlocked the American banking system. Personally reverse-engineering the disparate data structures of thousands of banks, Hockey authored the original Plaid core engine, designed Plaid Link, and established the military-grade security infrastructure that safeguarded millions of consumer credentials before co-founding Column, a nationally chartered developer bank.
Zachary Perret and William Hockey founded Plaid to build modern developer APIs for banking data.
Plaid became the default infrastructure powering Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase, raising Series B funding.
Plaid acquired investment data aggregator Quovo, expanding from bank accounts into brokerage and wealth management.
Visa agreed to buy Plaid for $5.3B; the US Department of Justice sued to block the deal, alleging monopolization of online debit.
Visa and Plaid abandoned the transaction; Plaid raised $425 million led by Altimeter Capital at a $13.4B valuation.
Acquired identity verification platform Cognito for $250M and launched real-time account-to-account payments.
Plaid surpassed $350M ARR, powering over 8,000 fintech applications and 100M+ linked consumers.
Acquired the leading investment and wealth management data aggregation platform.
Acquired the identity verification and AML compliance platform.
Since its establishment in 2013, Plaid Inc. expanded from an early-stage venture into a recognized leader in Financial Data APIs, Open Banking & Fintech Infrastructure, overcoming key market challenges.
Over its history, Plaid Inc. executed decisive strategic pivots toward scalable monetization and digital distribution, securing its current market leadership.
By continually modernizing operations and embracing workflow automation, Plaid Inc. maintains resilience through changing technological and economic cycles.