Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

Fintech exuberance was a symptom of zirp. Brex enabled more credit to folks who couldn't otherwise get credit without a personal guarantee. Zirp and exuberance is over at this point in the credit super cycle. AI doesn't help those fundamentals. Valuations are trending towards fundamentals (based on interest rates, discounted cash flows, etc).

Capital One is paying a fair price for the customer base and infra imho to add to their business customer portfolio.

Congrats to Brex et el on their incredible journey.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#7

Post by fairity » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

Why are people saying this seems like a bad deal?

If they really only raised $1.7b, per Crunchbase, then this seems to me like a very good outcome for everyone involved except its late stage investors. And, even for the late stage investors, they're breaking even.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#8

Post by churchill » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

Pretty steep haircut from their $12b peak in 2022. And that's before you factor in their revenue that's grown 2.5* from ~$312M in 2022. If their figures are to be believed, Capital one is getting an asset growing 50% YoY, for just 7* revenues.

Maybe just pull a Bending Spoons after the acquisition, layoff most of the staff, and bring a lot of ops in-house and they'll be in profit ASAP.

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#9

Post by ChrisArchitect » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

Brex post: https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-and-capital-one-join-force...

Re: Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B

#10

Post by htrp » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

fairity wrote: post #7

Why are people saying this seems like a bad deal? If they really only raised $1.7b, per Crunchbase, then this seems to me like a very good outcome for everyone involved except its late stage investors. And, even for the late stage investors, they're breaking even.

I assume if you put in 100 mn at a 12 bn valuation in the last round, you're either getting 100 back at 1x pref or you're screwing over the common even more?

Considering the 12bn round was back in 21, I'd expect most of the employee base to be taking a haircut on the value of their options.