What’s next for Brex?

Fintech behemoth Brex raised $300M in a Series D-2 round, earning a valuation of $12.3B. The company also named Karandeep Anand as its CPO; he previously led Meta’s (a.k.a. Facebook’s) business products group, which serves more than 200 million businesses of all sizes.

Why should we care?
These funding and staffing developments suggest Brex intends to grow its client base rapidly and serve larger businesses in the process. Anand, the new CPO, will lead Brex’s product portfolio expansion. If the company wants to offer comprehensive banking solutions to enterprise clients, then it needs to provide the same range and quality of services that legacy banks do—not to mention competitors like Ramp, which have targeted big businesses from the get-go. Brex also has to serve its own clients as they grow and encounter new financial needs; offering a wide range of products and services can help Brex sign on clients while they’re small, and then maintain loyalty while these businesses grow larger and more profitable. Anand’s experience in serving corporate giants as well as scrappy startups can help Brex’s vision succeed. Henrique Dubugras, the company’s co-founder, also endorsed Brex’s unique engineering strategy. By avoiding third-party legacy vendors—a costly pre-launch move for fintech startups, but a tactic that confers greater independence over time—Brex can craft more versatile and integrated banking infrastructure than its competitors.