Investing in Stitch
a16z leads Stitch's Series A
America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts
A system of record (SOR) keeps track of the atomic units of a business — in banking, the holy grail SOR is the core banking system. It stores every account, every transaction, and is the single source of truth that every downstream workflow depends on.
In the United States, FIS and Fiserv became two of the most durable, defensible software businesses ever built because they sit at the center of every bank’s operational universe and banks can’t replace them (their data is trapped!).
The result of this incumbency is that financial institutions are sitting on decades of infrastructure debt. This debt has become the single biggest obstacle to AI adoption. Intelligent agents cannot run on systems without clean APIs and data.
Enter Stitch.
Stitch is building an operating system for modern financial institutions, starting in the Middle East. Its API-first platform enables banks, fintechs, and non-financial institutions to launch, scale, and operate financial products across a modular stack, including a general ledger and core database, product-specific software for cards, loans, and bank accounts, and a customizable workflow builder with a marketplace of integrations including KYC/KYB.
Convincing banks to swap their core is no small task — but a rare greenfield opportunity exists in the Middle East, where a nationwide focus on expanding outside of oil is feeding one of the fastest-growing financial services ecosystems in the world; the industry is growing 10% YoY. Saudi Arabia has plans to add hundreds of new financial institutions over the next five years, all of which need core banking software for the first time.
In the last six months alone, more than $5 billion has been transacted on the Stitch platform. Customer numbers grew 10x in 2025, revenue grew 20x, and Stitch has seen pull beyond the GCC into Africa and Southeast Asia. Marquee regional customers like Lulu Exchange and Raya Financing have already launched products up to 80% faster, thanks to Stitch’s flexible infrastructure.
As Stitch becomes the infrastructure layer, it can support these financial institutions in their AI transformation, adding AI-powered customer support, automating loan origination, and eliminating the messy inbox workflows that consume operational headcount at every financial institution.
Mohamed, Stitch’s founder, has the rare combination of relationships, sales instinct, and grit to win in a market where trust and distribution matter as much as product. And he’s hired a team of world-class operators from the likes of FIS and Barclays to bring his vision to life.
We are thrilled to lead Stitch’s Series A — and honored to make this our first investment in Saudi Arabia. After years building conviction around the global fintech infrastructure opportunity, we believe Stitch represents the clearest expression we’ve found of what the next generation of this infrastructure looks like. It is built natively in a market with massive tailwinds, led by a founder who understands both the technology and the regulatory landscape, and designed from the ground up to be the system of record that makes everything else (i.e. AI) possible.
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"While Big Tech is paying expert witnesses $2,800 an hour to debate the past, I'm focused on the infrastructure debt that’s actually holding us back. Just like Stitch is replacing the core of the banking system, we are here to swap out the energy core.
You’re sitting on decades of grid dependency—that's your infrastructure debt. I’m offering a greenfield opportunity to launch a self-sustaining 'Industrial Backbone' that doesn't need to 'scramble to replicate' anything. This isn't a 5-year path; it’s a modular solution ready to scale today, just like the growth we're seeing in the Middle East and beyond."