{"id":2713,"date":"2026-01-23T00:52:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/capital-one-buys-startup-brex-for-5-15-billion-in-firms-latest-deal\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T00:52:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:52:35","slug":"capital-one-buys-startup-brex-for-5-15-billion-in-firms-latest-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/capital-one-buys-startup-brex-for-5-15-billion-in-firms-latest-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Capital One buys startup Brex for $5.15 billion in firm&#8217;s latest deal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div id=\"RegularArticle-ArticleBody-5\" data-module=\"ArticleBody\" data-test=\"articleBody-2\" data-analytics=\"RegularArticle-articleBody-5-2\"><span class=\"HighlightShare-hidden\" style=\"top:0;left:0\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"InlineImage-imageEmbed\" id=\"ArticleBody-InlineImage-106289306\" data-test=\"InlineImage\">\n<div class=\"InlineImage-wrapper\">\n<div>\n<p>Brex co-founders Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras.<\/p>\n<p>Brex<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p><span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-1\">Capital One<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> said Thursday that it was acquiring payments startup Brex for $5.15 billion, the latest splashy deal undertaken by the bank&#8217;s CEO, Richard Fairbank.<\/p>\n<p>The firm, which disclosed the deal in its fourth-quarter earnings statement, said the deal is made up of 50% cash and 50% stock. Brex was previously valued at $12.3 billion. <\/p>\n<p>Shares of the bank fell about 3%.<\/p>\n<p>Under Fairbank, a rare founder-CEO of a major U.S. bank, Capital One acquired rival card firm Discover Financial last year for about $35 billion. That deal was Fairbank&#8217;s crowning achievement, giving the credit card lender access to one of the only payment networks of any scale. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since our founding, we set out to build a payments company at the frontier of the technology revolution,&#8221; Fairbank said in a release. &#8220;Acquiring Brex accelerates this journey, especially in the business payments marketplace.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Fairbank said that Brex pioneered the combination of corporate cards, banking and spend management software: &#8220;They have taken the rarest of journeys for a fintech, building a vertically integrated platform from the bottom of the tech stack to the top.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, the more than 50% decline in valuation for Brex from its 2023 level shows the headwinds that even successful fintech companies have encountered. <\/p>\n<p>Brex is among a class of fintech firms that rose to prominence during a period of low interest rates; it was known initially as a startup that made loans to other startups via its cards.<\/p>\n<p>But the company expanded beyond technology into other sectors and now services larger established firms and startups alike, including <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-8\">Robinhood<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span>, <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-9\">Zoom<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"\/><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> and Anthropic. <\/p>\n<p>Capital One, which has offered business credit cards for decades, became increasingly convinced that it was Brex&#8217;s model that would be the winning offering, according to a person with knowledge of the lender&#8217;s strategy. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We didn&#8217;t have to pursue this acquisition, our growth was incredibly strong,&#8221; Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi told CNBC in an interview.<\/p>\n<p>Combining Brex&#8217;s technology with Capital One&#8217;s reach and resources would grow the startup&#8217;s scale faster than as a standalone firm, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brex co-founders Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras. Brex Capital One said Thursday that it was acquiring payments startup Brex for $5.15 billion, the latest splashy deal undertaken by the bank&#8217;s CEO, Richard Fairbank. The firm, which disclosed the deal in its fourth-quarter earnings statement, said the deal is made up of 50% cash and 50% [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[343,2348,2646,217,524,2194,505,1127],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-loan","tag-billion","tag-brex","tag-buys","tag-capital","tag-deal","tag-firms","tag-latest","tag-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finzexpert.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}