Pipe, a fintech company enabling embedded financial solutions for software platforms, today announced its strategic acquisition of Glean.ai, an AI-powered spend management company.
With this acquisition, Pipe becomes the first embedded finance company to bring together “embedded capital and spend management for small businesses via its partners.”
Glean.ai was built to address the lack of transparency “surrounding a company’s expenses.”
Founder Howard Katzenberg, former CFO of OnDeck, wanted to solve the challenge he’d experienced firsthand: not having “the right visibility into how company finances were being spent.”
The result is Glean.ai, the AI-powered spend management solution that provides one-click “access to spending trends, billing errors, and savings opportunities, as well as delivering real-time, cross-functional budgeting and bill pay tools.”
Glean.ai utilizes AI to examine patterns over time and “help business owners make timely, data-driven decisions.”
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, “nearly half of small businesses today use personal credit cards and fail to separate business and personal expenses.”
While mid-market and enterprise companies have access “to robust spend management solutions, such as Brex and Ramp, there remains a gap for SMBs who don’t have a complete view of their business expenses.”
With this acquisition, Pipe will be able to offer the spend management tools that “small businesses do not have access to today.”
Glean.ai’s spend management solution is a “complement to Pipe’s existing embedded capital and business charge card solution, which are delivered through Pipe’s payments and vertical software partners.”
Pipe is working with the Glean.ai team to “integrate it within Pipe’s internal processes and build a better spend management solution partners can offer to their small business customers.”
Glean.ai will continue to be available to “existing and new customers directly from Glean.ai.”
Luke Voiles, CEO, Pipe said:
“We’re thrilled to announce the addition of Glean’s spend management solution to Pipe. It’s a strategic move that empowers us to address the two biggest pain points faced by small businesses today—access to capital and effective spend management. By combining Pipe’s innovative technology, resources, and expertise with Glean, we’re giving business owners the precise tools they need to thrive. With seamless access to capital and smarter spend insights, we’re enabling sustainable growth, better operational oversight, and long-term success for small businesses.”
Katzenberg, a fintech executive, brings considerable industry experience and has long “shared a vision with Voiles for transforming business finance.”
Howard Katzenberg, CEO, Glean.ai said:
“This partnership is a perfect alignment of our joint vision and values, and it represents a game-changing opportunity for small businesses. They get the support and resources to grow, while Pipe and Glean together create a more powerful, unified platform that accelerates their success.”
Greenhill & Co. served as the “exclusive financial advisor” to Glean.ai on this transaction.
As noted in the update, Pipe makes capital and financial tools accessible to growing businesses “inside the software they use every day.”
Their embedded solutions are built to scale and “give business builders across industries the power to grow on their own terms.”
As mentioned in the announcement, Glean.ai is a provider of AI-powered spend intelligence and bill pay solutions, dedicated to “transforming finance operations through intelligent automation and spend insights.”
Glean.ai enables entrepreneurs to “drive material savings by identifying spend anomalies, billing errors, and savings opportunities.”