Capital One Financial Corp. has reached an agreement to acquire fintech platform Brex for $5.15 billion, a deal that Brex founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi said will accelerate the company's growth via the banking giant's scale.
With the acquisition, which Capital One expects to close in the middle of 2026 pending customary closing conditions, Brex will become a part of Capital One and remain led by Franceschi, Brex CFO and president Ben Gammell and the rest of its leadership team, Franceschi said in a blog post on Thursday. He will report to Capital One chief enterprise services officer Frank LaPrade, whose "mission will be to leverage every part of Capital One to co-create with me the most ambitious plan to accelerate our business," according to Franceschi.
Brex, which launched in 2017 and launched an integrated travel solution with Spotnana in 2023, offers a platform through which companies can issue corporate cards, make payments and automate expense management. It reports "tens of thousands" of business, customers, including more than 300 public companies and a third of startups in the U.S., Franceschi said. Reported clients include TikTok, Intel, Robinhood and DoorDash.
In Capital One's earnings call on Thursday, chairman, founder and CEO Richard Fairbank said the acquisition will help Capital One grow business travel revenues in its own travel portal.
"Our travel portal is already on a strong growth trajectory, powered largely by our massive consumer franchise," Fairbank said. "As we integrate Brex and its spend management platform with our travel portal, businesses will be able to manage their corporate travel expenditures, payments and travel policies directly on the Capital One travel portal."
Brex, meanwhile, will be able to tap Capital One's large customer presence and marketing and research and development resources to "supercharge our go-to-market and product development with levels of investment that will accelerate our mission by over a decade," according to Franceschi.
Capital One's $5.15 billion price tag for Brex, which it plans to acquire with a combination of stock and cash, is significantly lower than Brex's $12.3 billion valuation in its 2022 funding round. The company in early 2024 cut about 20 percent of its workforce.
Capital One has invested in, or acquired, a number of travel companies in recent years. It acquired concierge business Velocity Black in 2023 and invested $25 million in Inspirato in the same year through Capital One Ventures. It also led Hopper's $170 million Series F round in 2021 and invested a further $96 million in the company in 2022.
*A version of this story was originally published by Business Travel News.