Newcomer · Oct 19, 2026 · 52m · 43m saved
With Immad Akhund, Co-Founder and CEO of Mercury
Mercury has gone from zero to $1 billion in annualized revenue in seven and a half years, and Immad Akhund, its co-founder and CEO, told Eric Newcomer on the Newcomer podcast that the money now chasing AI startups looks like the top of the last cycle.
Most fintech founders talk about AI as a tailwind. Immad runs a bank-like business that serves about one in three US startups, and he said both things can be true at once: AI is transformational, and seed valuations are in a bubble.
"Both things can be true — AI is transformational, but we could also be in a bubble." — Immad Akhund
Immad has a direct view of the startup economy because Mercury serves 450,000 customers, and it is now waiting on regulators to become a chartered bank. Mercury is his fourth company.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 52 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
Mercury crossed $1B of annualized revenue, up from $650M a year earlier
More than 60% of its customers still arrive organically or by word of mouth
Mercury has conditional approval from the OCC and FDIC to become Mercury Bank N.A. next year
AI agents can send payments through Mercury, but a person must still click to approve each one
Agentic cards let an agent spend up to a set daily limit without approval
A seed company with "a pulse" at Y Combinator is worth about $50M, in Immad's telling
Immad is not convinced data-center capacity has been overbuilt, because compute can be resold
Mercury's engineers write about 4x more code a month than a few years ago
Mercury replaced its support vendor with its own agent so the agent could actually make payments
1. A $1M Wire in Four Days
Immad started Mercury in 2017 on one observation about small-business banking. Every company needs it, and getting it was a bad experience.
Immad Akhund built Mercury because every business needs a bank and the experience was poor
"In 2017, when I kind of first started Mercury, banking was one of these things that every single business needs, but the experience sucked." — Immad Akhund
Mercury launched in April 2019. Immad expected a slow start, and instead a stranger moved a large sum into the bank within days.
Immad Akhund expected a slow launch and got a $1M deposit from a stranger in four days
"I was like, you know, this is gonna be a slug... within four days, I think we had someone sign up that I hadn't met, that transferred a million dollars to their Mercury bank account." — Immad Akhund
Word of mouth drove that early growth, along with a broad seed round that included a16z and Elad Gill. Immad said more than 60% of Mercury's customers still come organically or by word of mouth.
