Slash Financial, a fintech that nearly collapsed after the Kanye West controversy, has now reached unicorn status. The company raised $100 million in a Series C round led by Ribbit Capital, with Khosla Ventures and Goodwater Capital also leading.
This round puts the San Francisco company’s value at $1.4 billion. NEA and Y Combinator also joined, making this their fourth investment in Slash.
With this round, Slash’s total funding is now over $160 million, coming less than a year after its Series B at a $370 million valuation. In just two years, the company’s annual revenue jumped from $10 million to $250 million, and it now generates $300 million in profit, serving 5,000 customers. Its annual card volume exceeded $1 billion in 2024 and reached $3 billion in 2025.
Slash was founded five years ago by Victor Cardenas and Kevin Bai, who were both 19 at the time. Cardenas left Stanford and Bai left the University of Waterloo to launch their first product, offering banking services for sneaker resellers. The niche took off quickly.
But in late 2022, after Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks and Adidas ended the Yeezy partnership, the sneaker reselling market crashed. Slash’s revenue dropped by 80% almost overnight. Rather than shutting down, Cardenas and Bai switched to a vertical banking model, focusing on one industry at a time before expanding.
They first targeted performance marketing agencies, crypto companies, and HVAC businesses. Now, Slash works with web3 companies, e-commerce businesses, agencies, contractors, healthcare suppliers, online travel agencies, and wholesalers.
Slash provides a single platform with business checking accounts, corporate cards, expense and treasury management, global payments, stablecoin support, and invoicing. Within nine months of launching stablecoin payments, the company passed $1 billion in annual volume.
Its banking system is built on Column, a chartered bank started by a former Plaid executive. This partnership helped Slash get through the collapse of Synapse, the banking-as-a-service provider whose failure disrupted many fintech rivals.
The Series C funding will also help launch Slash’s biggest product yet: Twin, an AI financial agent that acts as a Chief of Staff for customers. Twin gives insights and can take direct action across financial tasks, showing Slash’s move from financial tools to autonomous financial operations.
Slash’s main competitors are Ramp, valued at $32 billion, and Brex, which was recently bought by Capital One. Both use horizontal models across many industries. Slash, on the other hand, focuses on one niche at a time, building strong trust before expanding.
Now that it has reached unicorn status and made AI agents a key part of its plan, Slash wants to become the financial back office for the next generation of business operators.
