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Hello!
It’s the start of July, and I’ve been noticing how quickly time blurs when you’re deep in building mode.
You don’t always feel the passing months in real time. You notice them in hindsight, usually when patterns start repeating, or priorities quietly shift.
This week’s note is a reflection of a few of those patterns.
Here’s what’s worth sharing:
What’s New?
Featured Insight: What Airwallex Signals About Fintech GTM
A recent profile on Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang highlights how quickly the global fintech landscape is consolidating around infrastructure players.
What began in 2015 as a cross-border payments solution has evolved into a broader financial operations platform — now serving over 300,000 customers across 47 countries with offerings that include global accounts, corporate cards, and business payments tools. The company is now valued at around $11B following a recent $320M fundraising round.
At its core, the story is less about payments and more about platform expansion: Airwallex didn’t stay in a single category. It expanded into adjacent financial workflows once distribution and trust were established.
What this signals for GTM teams:
Category expansion beats category purity
Fintech winners rarely stay narrow. Once distribution is built, expansion into adjacent workflows becomes the growth engine.The “stack” is replacing standalone products
Companies are increasingly choosing integrated systems over point solutions, reshaping how GTM and positioning need to evolve.Global GTM is now product-native
Airwallex reflects a broader shift toward companies being built global from day one, not expanded internationally later.
In fintech today, the endgame is becoming part of the financial operating system itself.
Why AI GTM Fails Before It Starts
A recent Forbes Council piece by ZoomInfo CRO James Roth highlights a recurring issue in enterprise AI adoption: most “AI-first” GTM rollouts don’t fail because of the models but because of the data underneath them.
In many organizations, AI tools are layered on top of fragmented CRM systems, inconsistent records, and incomplete account data. The result isn’t better decision-making. It’s confidently wrong outputs, like inaccurate account insights, misleading segmentation, and broken context across the sales process.
Let’s remember:
AI performance is constrained by data quality
Without clean, connected, and enriched first-party data, even strong models produce unreliable outputs.CRM fragmentation is now a GTM bottleneck
Duplicate accounts and missing context directly degrade AI-driven workflows.Low adoption is usually a trust problem, not a usage problem
If outputs are wrong, reps won’t rely on the system, no matter how advanced it is.
Coming Up on Ascend: Stories of Scale
AI is starting to feel less like experimental tech and more like core infrastructure for how the next generation of finance will actually run. At the same time, as blockchain and digital assets mature, the conversation is shifting from “what crypto is” to “what systems it can enable when it’s fully built out.”
Watch this and more in the next episode of Ascend: Stories of Scale, featuring Sagar Shah, Chief Business Officer at Evernorth.
We covered:
The future of digital assets and why timing matters
Scaling through strategic partnerships
What banking looks like in the agentic AI era
How traditional financial institutions are embracing blockchain technology
Stay tuned for the full episode streaming soon!
Upcoming Events
The Future of Fintech Starts With Better Conversations
It's an interesting time to be in fintech!
AI is changing how financial products are built. Digital assets are finding new use cases. Infrastructure is evolving faster than ever.
The industry is moving quickly, and we believe it's worth bringing the people driving that change into the same room.
That's exactly what Fintech Week San Francisco is about.
Join us September 29–October 1, 2026, at the Green Room in San Francisco for three days of conversations, collaboration, and fresh ideas with the founders, operators, investors, and innovators building what's next in fintech.
Early Bird registration is now live.
Upcoming Executive Events
I'll be on the road this July connecting with founders, finance leaders, and HR executives to discuss the future of AI, global talent, and modern payments. If you're in one of these cities, I'd love to see you there.
July 21 Los Angeles & July 23 Chicago | The Finance & AI Executive Table
This July, MidLyr is bringing together finance and AI leaders for two exclusive executive roundtables in Los Angeles and Chicago. These invitation-only dinners are designed to foster candid conversations among leaders from banks, sponsor banks, fintechs, and financial infrastructure providers who are shaping the future of AI in financial services.
Together, we'll explore:
What's preventing broader AI adoption across financial institutions today
How governance frameworks can enable innovation without increasing risk
Best practices for operationalizing AI in regulated environments
How banks, fintechs, and infrastructure providers can work together to scale AI securely and responsibly
This is an opportunity to connect with peers facing the same challenges and opportunities.
July 22 Austin & July 24 Chicago | Ontop: High Frequency US – Global Talent & Payments Dinner
Ontop's High Frequency US dinner series brings together the founders, operators, HR leaders, and fintech executives shaping the future of global work.
As companies continue to expand across borders, leaders are navigating increasingly complex challenges around hiring, compliance, payroll, and payments. These private, invite-only dinners provide a space for candid, off-the-record conversations with peers who are building and scaling global teams.
What to expect:
A highly curated group of founders, executives, and operators
Honest conversations on global hiring and workforce management
Insights into cross-border compliance, payments infrastructure, and the evolving regulatory landscape
This is an opportunity to connect with leaders navigating the realities of global growth.
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As we head into the Fourth of July weekend, I hope you find a little time to step away from the constant pace of building.
Some of the best ideas don't come during back-to-back meetings or while racing through a to-do list. They show up when there's enough space to think differently.
Wherever you're spending the weekend, I hope it gives you the chance to recharge, reflect, and come back ready for what's ahead in the second half of the year.
Happy Fourth of July to those celebrating, and thank you for being part of our community.
- Angelique
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