25 per cent of fintechs pitching top VC are AI-first startups

Around 25 per cent of fintechs pitching a top VC for funding are AI-first startups, according to a top VC.Asked what per cent of fintechs pitching Breega, a European VC which backs UK savings and investment app Moneybox and UK card-consolidator Curve, are AI-first startups, Breega partner Benjamin Deplus said:“I guess in fintech, it. Is still pretty low.“I mean you have AI involved but it’s mostly for workflow automation. It's not the heart of the product.“I think that is the opportunity for the next years. In fintech, AI-first companies, they are, from what I see, maybe 25 per cent of the companies have AI-first.”Deplus was speaking on the Tech.eu fintech podcast with Florian Reichert, partner and managing director at Picus Capital, the early-stage tech investment firm, which backs Dutch payment processing tech firm Silverflow and French BNPL firm Alma.The pair discussed an array of subjects focused on fintech and VC trends in 2024.On hot investment fintech sectors in 2024, two of those cited by the pair were CFO stack fintechs and payment infrastructure fintechs.Reichert said:“We have seen a lot of promising early-stage funding for infrastructure plays when it comes to fintech and especially payments.“All of these have a bit longer time to market because you have much more product to build.“A lot of them will now this year and next year move into very interesting stages of scale to make them very attractive for growth capital.”Deplus said: “There is still a lot to do in the CFO stack, from enterprise to SMB. Actually, with this AI wave, there is a lot to be done in the financial planning space.”