CBI’s Fintech 100 2025: The Most Promising Fintech Startups (by Sector)
Every year, CB Insights releases its much-anticipated Fintech 100 list—an annual snapshot of the most promising startups shaping the global financial ecosystem.
The 2025 edition arrives at a pivotal moment for fintech: as venture capital tightens, profitability expectations grow, and AI-driven innovation redefines what’s possible across banking, payments, insurance, and wealth management.
This year’s Fintech 100 reflects a strategic shift toward infrastructure, embedded finance, and automation.
From UK-based data analytics platforms like 9Fin to U.S. compliance automation pioneers like Amlyze, these companies represent the bleeding edge of fintech transformation.
In this article, we break down the top fintech startups of 2025 by sector, highlighting their innovations —so you can explore the future of finance firsthand.
1. Banking & Digital Finance
The banking segment continues to dominate fintech innovation.
In 2025, challenger banks and API-based infrastructure providers are reinventing how financial services reach customers worldwide.
Top Companies
Affinity is redefining access to digital financial services in emerging markets. Its platform offers everyday banking, micro-savings, and payment tools tailored to underserved communities—positioning it as one of Africa’s fastest-growing neobanks.
Agora focuses on digital finance and blockchain infrastructure, bridging the gap between traditional financial institutions and decentralized networks. Its core mission: making institutional-grade DeFi more accessible for enterprise adoption.
Aspora facilitates international money transfers and remittance payments with an emphasis on speed, transparency, and lower transaction costs. Its Series B funding round underscores strong investor confidence in cross-border payment modernization.
Sector Overview
The 2025 Fintech 100 confirms a clear narrative: cross-border and underserved-market banking are the next frontiers.
Banks like Affinity and Aspora are leveraging API connectivity and embedded finance to localize access while ensuring regulatory compliance across jurisdictions.
In short, banking fintechs are not just building apps—they’re building global rails.
2. Payments & Crypto Infrastructure
Payments remains fintech’s most competitive and fastest-evolving sector.
The focus this year? Instant settlements, embedded payment APIs, and crypto-to-fiat infrastructure that can scale securely and compliantly.
Top Companies
Baanx is pioneering crypto payments infrastructure, allowing businesses to issue crypto-backed payment cards and digital assets seamlessly integrated into traditional financial networks. With over $34M in total funding, it’s a rising leader in the “Web3 banking” segment.
Aspora (also listed under banking) provides hybrid payment and remittance APIs—demonstrating how category overlap increasingly defines fintech’s future.
Sector Overview
Payment innovation in 2025 centers on programmable money and faster global settlement.
CB Insights notes that nearly 20% of listed fintechs now embed crypto or blockchain as core infrastructure—not speculative assets.
From Aspora to Baanx, these firms exemplify how fintech payments are merging traditional and decentralized ecosystems into one coherent financial layer.
3. Wealth Management & Capital Markets
In 2025, wealthtech is being reinvented by AI, data analytics, and embedded investing APIs.
The companies here are empowering advisors, institutions, and individuals with smarter, faster financial decision-making tools.
Top Companies
9Fin provides data and analytics for debt markets, serving institutional investors and financial advisors. Its AI-driven models parse financial filings and news to predict credit trends, helping clients make informed decisions.
Alpaca powers commission-free trading and embedded investing for fintechs worldwide. Its Series C funding round reflects strong growth from B2B developer integrations and partnerships with neobanks and super-apps.
Axyon AI leverages machine learning for asset management, predicting market movements and portfolio risks with institutional-grade precision. It’s redefining predictive investing across Europe.
Sector Overview
AI is now a baseline, not a differentiator, in capital markets fintech.
The real edge comes from explainable AI and API integration—features that platforms like Alpaca and 9Fin are perfecting.
The result? A new generation of wealthtech that blends automation with human insight, allowing both fintech developers and traditional asset managers to innovate faster.
4. Fraud Detection, Compliance & Regtech
As fintech matures, so does regulation.
The 2025 Fintech 100 highlights compliance automation and fraud prevention as critical enablers of trust, especially in global payments and crypto infrastructure.
Top Companies
Amlyze provides compliance management and anti-money-laundering (AML) solutions for fintechs and banks. Its real-time risk assessment engine detects suspicious transactions across borders—helping startups stay compliant as they scale.
Auditoria.AI automates financial workflows and compliance auditing through generative AI. Its systems analyze financial statements, automate reconciliation, and flag anomalies in accounting operations—bringing CFO-grade insights to fintech startups.
Sector Overview
Regtech companies like Amlyze are quickly moving from back-office to mission-critical infrastructure.
With increasing regulatory scrutiny in both the EU and U.S., fintechs are prioritizing compliance automation as a growth enabler, not just a safeguard.
Expect this sector to continue expanding, particularly as AI-driven fraud prevention becomes embedded within payments and core banking systems.
5. Financial Operations & Accounting
A less flashy but equally vital fintech sector, financial operations (“finops”) tools are becoming indispensable for scaling businesses.
These startups help finance teams plan, forecast, and manage spend intelligently—critical during an era of capital efficiency.
Top Companies
Abacum is redefining financial planning and analysis (FP&A). Its SaaS platform connects finance and business teams, automating budget forecasting and scenario planning. Trusted by leading SaaS and fintech firms, it’s a standout in operational finance.
Auditoria.AI (also listed under compliance) bridges FP&A and accounting automation, showing how AI unifies multiple finance functions.
Sector Overview
Finops companies are the silent revolutionaries of fintech.
They empower organizations to run finance like software—continuous, real-time, and data-driven.
Abacum’s model exemplifies how operational finance can scale without bloating headcount.
6. Insurance & Risk Intelligence (Insurtech)
CB Insights’ Insurtech 50—part of the broader Fintech 100—spotlights innovators revolutionizing how risk is priced, sold, and managed.
The 2025 cohort is particularly strong in AI underwriting, embedded insurance APIs, and climate-related risk modeling.
Representative Insurtech Innovators
While specific company data from this sheet reflects fintech more broadly, the Insurtech 50 collectively includes leaders like:
Zego – A UK-based commercial insurance platform for gig workers and fleets
Lemonade – U.S. pioneer in AI-driven renters and homeowners insurance
Root Insurance – Auto insurance based on behavioral data and telematics
Kin Insurance – Digitally native home insurance tailored for high-risk geographies
Each of these firms exemplifies the 2025 insurtech mission: automate underwriting, personalize pricing, and embed protection into everyday digital experiences.
Sector Overview
Insurtech remains the sleeping giant of fintech.
With embedded coverage becoming a feature across payments, lending, and mobility platforms, the next five years may see insurers evolve into APIs, not just policies.
7. Institutional DeFi & Digital Assets
DeFi isn’t dead—it’s going corporate.
A growing wave of startups is focusing on institutional-grade DeFi infrastructure, enabling secure blockchain integration for regulated financial institutions.
Top Companies
Agora (revisited) and Baanx are key players in this emerging category.
Their focus: building bridges between crypto and compliance, making tokenized finance practical for banks, payment processors, and enterprises.
Sector Overview
Institutional DeFi is moving beyond speculation toward utility—from stablecoin settlements to blockchain-based capital markets.
Expect continued growth in 2026 as tokenized treasury products and on-chain compliance gain traction.
8. AI and Predictive Analytics in Fintech
AI is now the common denominator across nearly every fintech segment.
The 2025 Fintech 100 confirms that AI is the operating system of fintech, powering credit scoring, fraud detection, forecasting, and personalization.
Top Companies
Axyon AI and Auditoria.AI exemplify how artificial intelligence drives measurable ROI in fintech operations—from predicting market outcomes to automating cashflow reports.
Sector Overview
As generative and predictive AI converge, fintechs are building self-optimizing financial systems that learn and adapt continuously.
Expect 2026’s Fintech 100 to include even more AI-native startups specializing in niche verticals like ESG scoring, SME credit automation, and AI-driven B2B payments.
Global Trends and Takeaways
1. Capital Efficiency is the New Growth
Across all sectors, 2025’s top fintechs share one trait: efficiency. Unlike the 2021–2022 growth-at-all-costs era, this generation is building sustainable, profitable models focused on revenue and automation.
2. AI-First, Not AI-Only
AI’s role is shifting from buzzword to backbone. Whether it’s Axyon’s asset management models or Amlyze’s compliance monitoring, AI is the invisible infrastructure powering fintech’s next chapter.
3. Fintech is Becoming Infrastructure
The line between fintech and SaaS is fading. Platforms like Alpaca (investing APIs) and Abacum (finance automation) illustrate that fintech is no longer an “app” industry—it’s an API economy enabling other businesses to build financial experiences.
4. Regional Maturity
The 2025 list features fintechs from more than 30 countries, underscoring how capital, talent, and regulation are diversifying. The UK and U.S. remain dominant, but Africa (Affinity), the EU (Amlyze, Axyon AI), and APAC markets are catching up fast.
Conclusion: FinTech’s Next Act
The CB Insights Fintech 100 2025 is more than a list—it’s a blueprint for the future of financial innovation.
The standout companies this year reflect fintech’s ongoing transformation from consumer apps to mission-critical infrastructure.
As fintech enters its maturity phase, the next frontier will be interoperability, embedded intelligence, and trust infrastructure—where compliance, AI, and customer experience coexist seamlessly.