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Business banking fintech Slash hits unicorn status

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Slash Financial, a Gen Z-founded business banking platform, has achieved unicorn status off the back of a $100 million Series C funding round.

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Led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Goodwater Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Y Combinator, the round values Slash at $1.4 billion.

Slash combines FDIC-insured business checking, corporate cards with uncapped cashback rewards, expense management, treasury management, global payments, and stablecoin support into a single platform.

Founded by college dropouts Victor Cardenas and Kevin Bai in 2021, the firm is now powering more than $30 billion in annualised payment volume and serving more than 5,000 businesses across a growing range of industries.

The company surpassed $250 million in annualised revenue in 2025 and exceeded $1 billion in annualised stablecoin payment volume within nine months of launching the product.

With the Series C in place, Slash is making a major AI play through the launch of Twin, a financial agent promising to bring intelligence and automation to the financial workflows of customers.

The firm claims that Twin acts as an “AI Chief of Staff” by leveraging contextual access to a company’s entire Slash account to surface insights on recurring financial or operational tasks, and take real action via direct card or bank payments and other key functions.

Victor Cardenas, CEO, Slash Financial, says:. “This round lets us build the next layer of what Slash can do: more industries, more markets, more of the financial tools businesses actually need.”

After Kalshi Appeal, Prediction Markets Fight Could Head to Supreme Court

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An appellate court is expected to reach a decision after hearing arguments from Kalshi and lawyers representing the state of Nevada.

Some legal experts speculated that the state vs. federal jurisdiction battle over regulating prediction markets companies could soon be headed to the United States Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments from lawyers representing prediction markets platform Kalshi and Nevada authorities over the state’s ban on the prediction markets’ event contracts. The appeal was over a lower court decision preventing Kalshi from offering certain event-based contracts in Nevada, based on claims that the company needed a gaming license.

Thursday oral arguments by Kalshi and the State of Nevada. Source: US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

The appellate judge overseeing Thursday’s oral arguments and the lawyer for Kalshi acknowledged that there had been several state-level enforcement actions against the company and other prediction market platforms, including criminal charges filed in Arizona. However, last week a federal court blocked Arizona authorities from enforcing the state’s gambling laws on Kalshi’s event contracts.

“I think the body of case law does demonstrate that what we really need to avoid here is having a state and a federal court considering exactly the same issue at exactly the same time and potentially reaching different outcomes,” said Colleen Sinzdak, representing Kalshi.

Related: CFTC probes oil futures trades tied to Trump’s moves in Iran: Report

Central to Kalshi’s argument was that the platform’s event contracts were “swaps” falling under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rather than state gaming authorities. CFTC Chair Michael Selig has backed this position in the case of Crypto.com’s prediction markets against Nevada authorities.

The appellate court did not immediately announce a decision following oral arguments. Any ruling could affect how state courts treat prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket as policymakers come to terms with the growing market, expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030.

Coinbase’s top lawyer weighs in on prediction market arguments

Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal, whose company was not a party to the Kalshi proceedings but has a stake in the prediction markets fight, speculated that the case could go the US Supreme Court.

“The questions at oral argument are an unreliable signal in predicting the leanings of a court,” said Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal in a Thursday X post following the oral arguments. “Either way, I stand by my longstanding prediction— the Supreme Court will resolve whether sports [contracts] on [Designated Contract Markets] are swaps subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC.”

The US Supreme Court gave states the authority to regulate sports gambling in its 2018 decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets?