Hey fintech friends,
What a busy start to 2026– between banks acquiring fintechs, fintechs acquiring banks, merchant acquirer PayPay's $12.7 billion IPO, and prediction markets platforms acquiring over 273,908 new users each month, the only thing left to acquire in Q1 is a sense of perspective on what’s trending across fintech.
For new readers, Signals is the premium subscriber edition of TWIF designed to get you away from the headlines and to explore the larger trendlines. Each quarter, we break down four key questions on fintech activity:
Which concepts are getting funded?
Where are exits, M&A, and SPACs concentrated?
Which firms are raising debt and venture funds for fintech?
Which products were launched over the last quarter?
If you haven’t already, subscribe to future editions here!
Overall activity
Total fintech funding fell 21% from the prior quarter, to $10.23 billion in Q1 (a 16% increase Year-over-Year) across 263 deals. The number of equity raises was up 36% QoQ (-2% YoY), bringing average deal sizes down 42% QoQ (+22% YoY).
See full Q1’26 data here (for paid subscribers only).
Broader venture funding (across all sectors) surged to $300 billion in Q1, with most of this investment getting routed to later-stage AI raises (OpenAI’s $122B raise, Anthropic’s $30B Series G, xAI’s $20B Series E, and Waymo’s $16B raise last quarter made up four of the 5 largest venture rounds ever recorded).
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