Former PayPal leaders Jeremy Jonker, Jay Ganatra, and Mario Ruiz form fund to back the builders of fintech infrastructure and commerce enablement
Infinity Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in founders building across fintech infrastructure and commerce enablement, announced its inaugural $158 million fund. The capital will fuel Infinity Venture’s model, which applies decades of operating and investing experience to de-risk execution, accelerate scale, and support product development and go-to-market strategies for its portfolio companies. Since their first close in June 2021, Infinity Ventures has funded eleven companies building solutions that address the biggest hurdles in today’s financial infrastructure: access, utility, flexibility, and cost.
“We are identifying opportunities to upgrade infrastructure, and expand to new geographies as ecommerce proliferates and fintech becomes more seamless, regardless of a consumer’s wealth or a company’s size.”
Infinity Ventures was co-founded by Jeremy Jonker, Jay Ganatra and Mario Ruiz. The trio formerly held senior roles at PayPal, where their collective deal and investment experience notably include venture investments in Plaid, Divvy, Olo, Extend, Paxos, PPRO, Acorns, TaxBit, Toss, Tink, Happy Returns, and Paidy. Additionally, the team led the transformational M&A transactions of Venmo, Braintree, Honey, Hyperwallet, Xoom, Swift Financial and iZettle, and executed the growth equity investments into companies such as MercadoLibre, GoJek, Pine Labs and Uber.
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According to the World Bank, the financial services market currently represents $27 trillion in annual GDP. With the proliferation of digital commerce and banking, fintech companies are acquiring capital to build technology to support the transformation. CBInsights data shows that since 2021, nearly 170 fintech companies have become unicorns, a rate 3.1x higher than in the previous 15 years combined.
“Over the last decade the fintech industry has innovated consumer and business applications at a rapid pace, with intuitive design and sleek functionality that have been truly life-changing in terms of access, transparency and convenience,” said Co-founder and Partner Jeremy Jonker. “We see a massive opportunity investing in key infrastructure, making fintech apps and services more scalable and secure. Our team has the experience, and isn’t afraid to get our hands dirty helping founders build this core, underdeveloped layer, from negotiating contracts, formulating the product roadmap, and delivering on partnership and client opportunities.”
The firm participates in pre-seed through Series A rounds with initial checks ranging from $500K to $8 million. Infinity Ventures began investing from the fund in Summer 2021 and has deployed capital investments, globally spanning the U.S., Asia, Latin America, and Europe, in:
- Card91, payment infrastructure-as-a-service that simplifies the payments ecosystem
- Durable, an end-to-end platform for services businesses including integrated fintech and commerce stack
- Glean, an intelligent accounts payable platform to generate insights and recommendations based on line-item invoice data
- Mendel, an expense management tool to help businesses control budgets
- Neo.tax, technology that is reimagining taxes as a modern advantage
- Pagos, an intelligent payment infrastructure for commerce
- Replo, a no-code storefront builder that integrates into existing Shopify stores and 3rd-party apps
- Sensible Weather, a climate risk technology company that is de-risking weather for travelers and travel partners
- Skipify, universal 1-touch checkout to make shopping fast and frictionless
- Stealth Startup, focused on enabling an improved rebates experience for merchants
- Upside, a lending-as-a-service solution for CPG Brands to access debt capital for inventory growth
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“Massive adoption of ecommerce and fintech services by consumers and businesses alike have forever changed certain behaviors and processes,” said Co-founder and Partner Jay Ganatra. “We are identifying opportunities to upgrade infrastructure, and expand to new geographies as ecommerce proliferates and fintech becomes more seamless, regardless of a consumer’s wealth or a company’s size.”
Infinity Ventures will invest in approximately 25 global companies from this inaugural fund. The team will hire additional talent to support the investment efforts and portfolio companies needs.
“Fintech has been proven to be the great enabler of our generation. At PayPal we saw firsthand how digital payments could transform businesses, communities, and most importantly, individuals’ lives,” said Co-founder and Partner Mario Ruiz. “Our vision with Infinity Ventures is to expand the reach of commerce and fintech utility. To deliver on that, we are assembling a diverse team focused on global opportunities with the potential for greatest impact.”
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