By Jason Nelson
3 min read
Capital One said Thursday it has agreed to acquire San Francisco-based fintech firm Brex in a $5.15 billion stock-and-cash deal, expanding the bank’s push into business payments and expense management as it competes more directly with software-driven finance platforms.
The acquisition brings the fintech startup into one of the nation’s largest financial institutions, reflecting growing pressure on traditional banks to match the automation and speed offered by fintech providers.
“Acquiring Brex accelerates this journey, especially in the business payments marketplace,” Richard Fairbank, Capital One’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.
In September 2025, Brex announced plans to launch native stablecoin payments beginning with USDC, allowing customers to pay balances, send payments, and accept funds with automatic conversion into U.S. dollars. The company said the feature would enable businesses to manage both traditional and stablecoin-backed spending through a single platform.
Launched in 2017, Brex initially built its business around corporate cards for startups that had limited access to traditional banks.
“We started Brex in 2017 by inventing a new category of company that brings together financial services and software into one platform,” Pedro Franceschi, Brex’s founder and CEO, wrote on X. “Brex serves tens of thousands of businesses today, from one in three startups in the U.S. to some of the most important enterprises on the planet.”
Brex later expanded into expense management, banking features, and AI-powered tools designed to manage corporate spending. Franceschi described the Capital One acquisition as a growth-driven combination rather than a traditional consolidation.
“This combination is unlike any other bank M&A in history,” Franceschi said. “This story is about growth acceleration, and two founder-led companies coming together to bring a better way to manage money to millions of businesses in the mainstream U.S. economy, who are dramatically underserved by traditional banks.”
Brex has increasingly positioned artificial intelligence as a core layer of its finance platform, using it to categorize expenses, enforce spending rules in real time, and flag exceptions for review. The company also offers an AI assistant to handle routine tasks such as receipt matching and expense reconciliation.
Capital One did not disclose how Brex’s AI capabilities would be incorporated into its existing commercial banking products. However, following regulatory approvals, Franceschi said he will continue to lead Brex as CEO after the deal with Capital One is complete.
Capital One and Brex did not respond to requests for comment by Decrypt.
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