Finance · Profile from Finance Research Companion
Mercury (Mercury Technologies)
A San Francisco fintech, founded in 2017 by Immad Akhund, Jason Zhang and Max Tagher, that built the bank account most US start-ups now open first, without itself being a bank: deposits sat at partner banks (Evolve Bank & Trust and Choice Financial Group at launch, later Column N.A.), first through the middleware company Synapse and then directly. It took in ~$2bn of deposits and ~8,700 new customers in the days around the March 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank, offered up to $5m of FDIC insurance by sweeping balances across a network of banks, added cards, credit, software and personal accounts, and reported ~$500m of revenue in 2024 with GAAP profits. Its partner-bank years also brought the BaaS industry's problems to its door: a messy exit from Synapse, the 2024 ransomware breach and Federal Reserve enforcement order at Evolve, the forced closure of accounts tied to dozens of countries in August 2024, and a migration off Evolve in 2025. In April 2026 the OCC granted preliminary conditional approval for Mercury Bank, N.A., its own national bank.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2017 in San Francisco; public launch of business accounts in 2019 (company)
- Founders
- Immad Akhund (CEO; previously co-founder of the ad network Heyzap, sold to Fyber in 2016, reported), Jason Zhang and Max Tagher
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California; proposed bank based in Salt Lake City, Utah (OCC)
- Ownership / structure
- Private, venture-backed (Mercury Technologies, Inc.); investors include Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, Coatue, Sequoia, Spark, Marathon and TCV (reported). Not a bank: deposits held at FDIC-insured partner banks
- Partner banks
- Evolve Bank & Trust (2019–2025, via Synapse until 2023), Choice Financial Group (from 2019, reported), Column N.A. (from October 2024)
- Leadership
- Immad Akhund, co-founder and CEO; Jon Auxier (former SoFi Bank CFO) named CEO and president of the proposed Mercury Bank (company, 2026); Tim Mayopoulos, the FDIC-appointed CEO of the bridge bank that ran SVB after its failure, joined the board in 2025 (reported)
- Segment and clients
- Business banking for start-ups and small technology companies, ecommerce sellers and agencies; personal banking from 2024
- Scale
- ~$500m revenue and ~$156bn of transaction volume in 2024; ~$650m annualised revenue run-rate in Q3 2025 (reported); 300,000+ customers (2026, reported); ~800 staff (2024, reported)
- Profit
- GAAP and EBITDA profitable for ten consecutive quarters to early 2025 (company)
- Valuation
- ~$1.62bn (Series B, 2021); ~$3.5bn (Series C, March 2025); ~$5.2bn (Series D, May 2026) (reported)
10 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2019
Startup Bank Account Launch
Founding / launch
2021
Series B at 1 62bn
Funding round
2022
Venture Debt Treasury and Cards
Launch / product expansion
2023
Leaving Synapse for Direct Evolve
Partnership change
2023
SVB Crisis Inflows and Vault
Launch / crisis response
2024
International Offboarding
Restructuring / compliance failure
2024
Personal Banking and IO Card
Launch
2025
Exit from Evolve to Column and Choice
Partnership change
2025
Series C and D Profitable Growth
Funding round
2026
OCC National Bank Charter
Licence / charter