5 AI fintechs to watch

NEW YORK - Banks and investors are proactive in evaluating AI-driven startups for long-term growth opportunities. AI is becoming table stakes for many fintechs and financial services, Merlin Bise , chief technology officer at Inbenta , told FinAi News, and demand for AI solutions is only going to grow. Global fintech funding hit $103.1 billion in the first half of 2026, up 130% year over year, according to KPMG ’s Pulse of Fintech H1 2026 report published last month. Banking execs from KeyBank and Capital One told FinAi News that major FIs are always evaluating tech to add to their stacks but are being more proactive with AI. Out of the 70 fintechs that demonstrated their wares at Finovate Fall this week in New York, five stood out: Hyperlayer Founded : 2023 Total raised : 30 million pounds($40.5 million) Hyperlayer provides a programmable banking platform that enables financial institutions to launch AI-driven, customizable products and real-time rules on top of their existing core infrastructure without replacing it. Chief Executive Rob Rooney said the tech can also help FIs speed up the M&A process. “We are like the Iron Man suite to the bank,” Rooney said. “We can provide superhuman capabilities to the man inside.” Hyperlayer works with a global Tier 1 bank and is developing tools to help banks develop a native agentic-AI platform, he said. RangersAI Founded : 2024 Total raised : $250,000 in seed funding and bootstrapping RangersAI built an AI-powered scam-resilience platform, ScamRanger, that gives consumers real-time guidance and in-context education to spot manipulation before financial damage occurs. The company plans to work with banks, credit unions, payment providers and insurers to deploy the platform as a customer-facing layer to stop scams pre-transaction rather than flag fraud after the fact, CEO Ayelet Biger-Levin told FinAi News . “Banks have realized that getting money back from scammers is much harder than being proactive and stopping it in its infancy,” Biger-Levin said. “Our platform prepares consumers to beat social engineering scams, which are increasing at a rapid pace.” The tool is an app for individuals and can be white-labeled for banks, she said, adding that RangersAI is already working with a major FI in the United Kingdom, but declined to name the institution. Realta Founded : 2024 Total raised : Not disclosed Realta unifies fraud, AML, onboarding and transaction risk in one API — betting that unification beats the market's crowded point solutions. The company is privately funded by a single institution and has been in-market since May after building in stealth, co-founder and General Manager Christopher Mascaro told FinAi News at Finovate. The company relies on machine learning to stop fraud, Mascaro said, adding that FIs are heavily regulated and are concerned about tech that creates hallucinations. The fifth-generation model of Realta reportedly tripled fraud detection at its oldest client, which has been working with the company working with it in stealth mode, at the same false-positive rate, he added. Factify Founded : 2023 Total raised : $73 million Factify tackles a core problem in regulated industries: policies that are fragmented, inconsistent, not revised regularly and unusable by AI agents, which need deterministic rules, not judgment calls. The product converts scattered documentation — SharePoint, PDFs, emails and the like — into one machine-readable fixed internal policy, built collaboratively with stakeholders, Isaac Eliyahu, account executive, told FinAi News . AI agents operate within that codified policy only, eliminating hallucination risk, with every decision audited for compliance and exam-ready proof, Eliyahu said, adding that the tool can work for all industries but is gaining traction within financial services. McCarthy Hatch Founded : 2024 Total raised : Unknown McCarthy Hatch launched FSAi Risk Engine this summer. The AI tool reads all 3.7 million Consumer Financial Protection Bureau complaints, ignoring often-mislabeled metadata, to flag regulatory violations and consumer harm patterns, Jim McCarthy , founder and chairman of financial consulting agency McCarthy Hatch and a founding member of the CFPB, previously told FinAi News . The tool relies on the consumer's own words rather than pre-populated dropdown categories, McCarthy said. When consumers lodge complaints, they usually mislabel them, he explained. “The consumer doesn't know they have a VA mortgage, they just think they have a mortgage." By using AI to properly label complaints, banks can be proactive in understanding what product is a recurring problem and solve the issue beforeFIs are they fined by regulators, he said. The company uses OpenAI for its LLM needs. Editor’s note: All amounts have been converted to U.S. dollars. FinAi Lending Summit, set for Oct. 7-8 in Las Vegas, will include speakers from Fifth Third and Capital One as well as a fireside chat with U.S. Bank Senior Vice President – Lending Operations Group Manager Suzanne Rathbun . To learn more about the 2026 event and register, visit here .

5 AI fintechs to watch

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