Flex, a startup that gives private finance software program for enterprise homeowners, has acquired Maza, a finance app aimed toward Spanish audio system within the U.S., for $40 million, the businesses advised TechCrunch completely.
At first look, the pairing could seem a bit curious. Flex’s software program and funds infrastructure is to assist enterprise homeowners have a single app to conduct all their funds. Maza began out serving to Spanish-speaking customers — immigrants included — do issues like open a checking account, get a debit card, and supply those that wanted it with a person tax identification quantity (ITIN).
So how did the mission of those two corporations intersect? Over time, Maza realized that most of the customers of its app and companies have been really small enterprise homeowners, or solopreneurs. So the startup centered on creating enterprise software program for its Spanish-speaking clients and their small companies, operating a part of their operations on its tech stack. Examples included landscapers, cleansing companies, and development subcontractors, amongst others.
In 2024, Maza mentioned it was scaling income at a 290% year-over-year progress charge and had 250,000 clients.
The size that Maza skilled within the solopreneur phase caught the eye of Flex, which noticed it as a gateway for Flex’s personal providing, famous Luciano Arango, co-founder and CEO of Maza.
Over time, Flex has been constructing instruments to serve the individual behind the enterprise.
“As each corporations gravitated towards the identical person — enterprise homeowners with shopper wants — the strains between the 2 started to blur,” mentioned Flex founder and CEO Zaid Rahman. “Somewhat than construct a parallel product, it made extra sense to mix forces and scale from day zero to yr ten.”
As a mixed firm, the founders hope to “speed up” their “shared roadmap,” mentioned Rahman.
Maza will rebrand as Flex Client, and Maza’s founders — Arango, Robbie Figueroa, and Siggy Bilstein — will tackle govt roles inside the mixed entity.
“As founders, we’ve felt the ache of fragmented monetary instruments. Maza and Flex have been constructing from reverse ends of the identical drawback,” Arango mentioned. “Becoming a member of forces was the logical subsequent step.”
Maza’s pivot was a pure one, based on Arango.
“What shocked us most was how sturdy the shopper base grew to become,” Arango added.
So Maza continued constructing in that path, utilizing the proceeds of a beforehand undisclosed $15 million Sequence A spherical of funding that it raised in 2024. Wellington led that spherical, which included participation from present and new backers similar to Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tusk Enterprise Companions, and Titanium Ventures, in addition to singer Anderson Paak and the previous CEO of Amex Financial institution, Anré Williams.
Since its 2022 inception, Maza has raised a complete of $24 million in fairness. Additionally based in 2022, Flex has secured $45 million in fairness and $300 million in credit score amenities with the debt completely funding its bank card providing. Flex was valued at $250 million as of March. Titanium Ventures led its final increase, a $25 million equity round introduced in March.
Ninety-five % of Maza’s 22-person staff has been built-in into Flex, which had 64 staff on the finish of 2024.
Merger-and-acquisition offers within the fintech sector have picked up within the final two quarters, based on CB Insights’ State of Enterprise Q1 2025 report. Within the fourth quarter of 2024, the sector noticed 191 world M&A transactions. And within the first quarter of 2025, it noticed 184 M&A offers. Against this, there have been 143 fintech M&A offers reported within the third quarter of 2024.
Extra not too long ago, embedded finance platform Pipe acquired Glean.ai, which marketed itself as “accounts payable with a brain,” for an undisclosed quantity. Checkr additionally not too long ago signed a definitive settlement to accumulate Truework, an revenue and employment verification startup.
Source link