Brex
Corporate cards and spend management built for startups, underwriting on the company's cash rather than the founder's personal credit score.
Founded in 2017 in San Francisco by Brazilians Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, who had previously built the payments company Pagar.me. The idea solved a concrete problem: a newly funded company with no credit history rarely got a sensible corporate card. Brex underwrites against the company's bank balance instead and asks for no personal guarantee.
It came out of the Y Combinator accelerator and grew fast among tech startups. In 2022 it turned upmarket and dropped its smallest customers — an unpopular but telling call about where the margins actually were. It competes directly with Ramp and, further off, American Express.