Finance

Flex Secures $225 Million to Expand Finance Platform for Business Owners

Flex has raised $225 million in a combination of debt and equity funding to further develop its platform, which manages both business and personal transactions for business owners.

“We are saying goodbye to the days when owners had to separate personal and business income, spending, and accounting,” the company said in a LinkedIn post on March 5. “Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all underwriting and manual invoice processing.”

The Flex platform provides business banking, expense management, and a credit card, along with accounts payable (AP) automation features such as bill pay, global payments, and vendor payments via card, according to its website.

Looking ahead, Flex plans to introduce accounts receivable (AR) automation features like invoicing, reconciliation, and revenue collections.

Current offerings include flexible credit limits, transparent pricing, and AI-powered financial operations solutions, as outlined on its website.

Flex now manages more than $1 billion in annualized payment volume, the company shared on LinkedIn.

The funding round was led by Titanium Ventures and Victory Park Capital Advisors, according to the post.

Titanium Ventures highlighted in its LinkedIn post that Flex’s finance super app is "revolutionizing SMB finance."

"Flex’s vision to consolidate fragmented financial services into a seamless super-app addresses a critical pain point, enabling SMBs to optimize cash flow and focus on growth," the post said.

Victory Park Capital, in a separate LinkedIn post, noted that its $200 million credit facility with Flex will accelerate the development of the company’s payments infrastructure and software.

“We believe in Flex’s mission to provide efficient, streamlined tools that help owners manage their finances and ultimately grow their businesses,” said Kinan Hayani, a partner at Victory Park Capital.

Flex CEO Zaid Rahman told PYMNTS in a September 2023 interview that a single finance app, consolidating back-office functions on one platform, can help address the specific challenges facing small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) while enabling them to scale.

TECH

Tech Meets Family: The Rise of the Great Alliance

Listening to President Trump’s inaugural address, I was struck by his references to colonizing Mars, splitting the atom, and holding the world’s knowledge in the palm of our hands. After years of being sidelined by Washington, it was refreshing to hear technology celebrated once again as the driving force of American economic growth in an administration focused on innovation. Finally, there’s enthusiasm for how the government can harness the power of our tech sector to fuel American dynamism—creating companies that advance the national interest by unlocking boundless energy, deterring conflict, and generating abundance in all forms.

This excites me because American dynamism is both my passion and my life's work. But it also makes me reflect on my other, equally vital role, which, according to the ordo amoris, is the most important job I have. This role is intimately tied to building American dynamism in the most fundamental way: my work and responsibility as a mother. While much attention is given to technology and the state, we should be talking more about the institution that is often at odds with them: the family.

All of history, in many ways, can be seen as a conflict between the family and the state. Any student of Plato’s Republic quickly learns of this deep-rooted tension, although it’s mostly discussed in political theory. In practice, it's clear that these two institutions often clash as they compete for control over our lives, beliefs, values, history, and daily existence. If this seems exaggerated, especially at a time when the family appears to coexist within the state, it’s because, for decades, the state has been winning this battle against the family.

CRYPTO

Crypto Reserve Proposal Stirs Controversy Among Pro-Trump Tech Community

The Trump-tech alliance is showing its first real signs of tension — and it’s all about crypto.

President Donald Trump relied on crypto executives and investors for a significant portion of his 2024 campaign funds, promising to reward them by reducing regulations and making the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and the “bitcoin superpower of the world.”

Trump got off to a strong start with an executive order establishing a digital assets working group and pardoning Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. Additionally, the SEC dropped its lengthy investigation into Coinbase.

While these actions were praised by vocal tech supporters of Trump, his announcement over the weekend seemed to cross a line for many. In a post on Truth Social, Trump revealed plans for a strategic U.S. crypto reserve that would include not only bitcoin but also other digital currencies like ether, XRP, Solana's SOL token, and Cardano’s ADA.

For the most part, Trump’s crypto backers were only advocating for a bitcoin reserve, which would involve purchasing bitcoin with cash — seen by crypto enthusiasts as a smart way to invest in a decentralized currency that could serve as an alternative to traditional money. As Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted on X, bitcoin is seen as the "successor to gold."

However, critics argue that by expanding beyond bitcoin, Trump would be using taxpayer money to invest in riskier, unproven assets, potentially increasing the wealth of a small group of investors who own these coins. This is especially troubling for those who support drastically cutting government spending, like Elon Musk and his push for a “Department of Government Efficiency.”

“Taxation is theft,” wrote Joe Lonsdale, founder of venture firm 8VC and a vocal Trump supporter, on X. “It should be kept to a minimum. It’s wrong to steal my money for grift on the left; it’s also wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes.”

David Sacks, the venture capitalist chosen by Trump to be the White House’s AI and crypto czar, disagreed with Lonsdale, suggesting that it was too early to jump to conclusions. Sacks and Lonsdale, along with Musk and Peter Thiel, are central figures in the conservative tech circle.