Powering the Next Chapter of Banking
We’re thrilled to announce that Acrew Capital has led Glide’s Series A!
Glide is tackling a massively overlooked opportunity in fintech: modernizing the credit union and community bank sector. These institutions are the cornerstone of American banking — but many rely on fragmented vendor stacks running on infrastructure that is decades old. Glide’s embedded fintech platform helps these institutions compete in a digital-first world and give customers the seamless experience they’ve come to expect — without sacrificing the community trust they’ve built.
By replacing outdated onboarding and account opening tools with a unified digital experience layer, Glide reduces friction for both employees and customers. The company’s impressive early momentum is a testament to the strength of their product, GTM strategy, and urgency of the problem they’re solving:
Glide’s first product, Deposit Origination, has already proven transformational — cutting onboarding time from 20 minutes to under 3, and boosting conversion rates by 3x.
In just 12 months, Glide has signed 15 credit unions to multi-year contracts — all through founder-led sales.
At Acrew, we back founders that balance conviction with agility — and the Glide team embodies this mindset. The company is led by co-founders Gautam Ajjarapu (CEO), Sameer Kapur (CTO), and Vishnu Chakroborty (COO), who bring a rare combination of fintech depth, AI fluency, and execution speed in regulated markets. Their clarity of vision in the fast-moving AI landscape sets them apart, even among top-tier founders.
Glide Co-founders Vishnu Chakroborty (COO), Gautam Ajjarapu (CEO), and Sameer Kapur (CTO)
We’re proud to invest alongside Pear Ventures and Pathlight Capital, as well as strategic angels like Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe), Paul Williamson (former CRO of Plaid), and Arash Ferdowsi (Co-founder of Dropbox).
This new capital will accelerate Glide’s product roadmap — including loan origination and agentic tooling — while scaling the team across engineering, product, and go-to-market. (P.S. They’re hiring: careers.withglide.com)
The problem Glide is solving couldn’t be more timely. As AI reshapes every corner of financial services, banks face growing pressure to modernize or become irrelevant. We’re proud to support Glide as they power the next chapter of financial infrastructure — and help banks thrive in a digital-first, AI world.