Foundation Capital

We're excited to announce IPID raised a $16M Series A, led by Foundation Capital! Today, payments have gotten much faster, but banks still don’t always have the information they need before money moves. IPID enables companies to verify who they're paying, whether or not the account is open, and what the account's currency is before any money is sent. The company already reaches more than 4B accounts, covering 85% of the world's banked population, and they're continuing to grow. We're thrilled to partner with Damien Dugauquier and the IPID team.

AI will do wonderful things. Equity markets are likely to soar. But something else is highly likely with AI adoption, we’re all going to lose a lot money by accident and by fraud. Many trillions of dollars.  To oversimplify, there are 3 aspects to this: 1) Agents will malfunction.  Perhaps not forever, but for a long time and in unpredictable ways they will do things we didn’t want them to do.  Whether due to LLM's inherent tendency for hallucination, insufficient context, or outright error because these are complex systems, they’ll do things wrong. When it’s buying the wrong movie ticket, that’s one thing.  When it’s sending $10K to the wrong address with finality of payment, that’s a whole other ballgame. The more we ask of Muse of Instinct, the more they will eventually cost us. 2) Agents it will revolutionize the business of fraud.  It depends on the scam, of course, but in large part this is labor constrained operation.  Labor is now effectively infinite.  It can speak any language without accent, effortlessly localize, and highly customize to the individual based on each of our digital footprints. 3) Real time money movement currently sweeping the world makes the problem much harder. Pick your payment network of the future - RTP, Pix, UPI, SEPA Instant, stablecoins.  These are all push networks. Once money is moved, it’s gone.  No givesy’s backsey’s.   But wait, it's actually worse than you think.  Fraud is already a terrifyingly uncontained problem. The internet made this a global business meaning there is incredible fragmentation of commerce and payment platforms through which it is conducted. And law enforcement is, of course, overwhelmingly local. I’m sure the FBI works very hard to protect us from internet evil-doers, but I’m also sure it’s very difficult for them to raid call centers in Southeast Asia. With AI, those call centers become open source models running on laptops. The biggest tell that fraud is out of control is that no one knows how big of a problem it actually is. The FBI recorded $21B of loss due to cybercrime in 2025 and has observed a 4-year CAGR of 32%. It also freely admits that most victims never file, making this not even remotely a real number. Interpol's (mostly consumer) survey measured $1T in losses worldwide in 2023. On a roughly apples to apples basis, they see year-over-year growth in the US and EU of well over 40% in essentially a pre-AI era.  Yikes. We need to do something. We need to lock down our critical systems. We need to lock down the places that house and transmit our money.  Those places need to communicate with each other directly about bad actors.  They need to do this globally and in real time.  Due to this very deficit of global coordination, IPID has quickly become the global standard for bank account verification and intelligence, but there is so much more to do. That’s why we here at Foundation Capital are leading IPID’s Series A alongside Citi + HSBC. See first comment for more.

None of our security systems today were built with agents in mind. In our latest B2BaCEO podcast, Skyflow co-founder and CEO Anshu joins Ashu to talk about what he’s learned securing sensitive customer data across data stores, models, and agents. It aligns with a problem he’s been chasing for over two decades. “At some point you realize, you know what? There's probably a $100B company to be built just protecting the most sensitive data for customers at all these companies,” he shares. Tune in to the full episode: Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eKpwAD4H Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/e6K2EyQW YouTube: https://lnkd.in/e3Nb_p7k

Thank you to everyone who came out to our dinner last night! Had a great time connecting with friends and new faces across the fintech and crypto space here in New York. Reach out if you are building in either area and want to be at the next one! Alejandra Martinez Rodolfo Gonzalez Foundation Capital

The best way to understand new technology? Test it out for yourself. Jaya is letting AI agents manage her life operations. The day Muse launched, she used it to successfully find and apply for a new apartment and kick off a bidding process for a parking spot in San Francisco. Through hands-on learning, she's building insight about what the next great consumer AI agent will look like. For example, in her experiments with Instinct, the agent changed her passwords but didn't tell her. Communicating everything to the user—and being thoughtful about security and privacy concerns—will be key for adoption. Watch the full interview with The Information: https://lnkd.in/e2iagvqE

If a founder had 5 minutes to pitch, and no deck, here’s what I’d want to hear: In the first 4 minutes, I want to hear their proudest accomplishments and biggest obstacles. The proof doesn’t have to relate to what they’re building. It could be a world-class record in a sport that has nothing to do with their startup. Trey Holterman from Tennr was an All-American rower at Stanford. It could be walking away from a sure thing to take care of someone they love. Like George Netscher from SafelyYou who left a Berkeley AI PhD to build better care for seniors. Specifically for his mom who had Alzheimer's. Or a founder who made it through something most people would treat as a reason to stop. Like Caroline Clark from Arcade who was diagnosed as deaf at two. But she still went to Princeton, got a job at Sequoia, then started a company. What these show me is discipline and ambition. That the founder has done something exceptionally hard for a very long time. That drive carries over to startups. And only in the final minute would I want to see where that drive points them. The problem they’re fascinated with today. As an early stage investor, most of the founders I back are pre-revenue, and even pre-product. With markets shifting so quickly, the founder is the only durable asset in the deal. That makes venture a human psychology exercise. Find exceptional people. Then help them dream big enough. If that sounds like you, we would love to hear from you at Foundation Capital.