Maximum Emerges From Stealth With $30M to Replace Legacy Core Banking Systems With AI

Core banking startup Maximum closes $30 million Seed round

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Maximum is three-time founder Randy Fernando's vision to replace decades-old banking infrastructure with an AI-native operating system. Fernando is a veteran fintech operator, having founded and sold Vault to Acorns in 2017 and Power to Marqeta in 2023. "For decades, banks have attempted to serve the evolving needs of customers on infrastructure that was never designed for today's world," he says. "The advancement of AI is creating a paradigm shift in financial services, and banks can't keep pace by relying on legacy providers. Maximum will provide banks with ultimate control, powerful agentic capabilities, and the tools to innovate, enabling them to deliver exceptional new experiences to their customers and partners." Of the nearly five thousand banks in the US, more than 70% are still powered by legacy core systems built in the last century, long before mobile banking, real-time payments, digital currencies, or AI existed. As a result, many banks remain constrained by outdated platforms that make innovation slow, expensive, and operationally complex. Maximum has designed a real-time platform with AI powering the system at a foundational level, creating a base from which banks can build and deploy custom agents to automate complex operational workflows, gain real-time visibility into customer activity, and deliver innovative financial products. "Every generation of infrastructure eventually reaches a point where incremental improvements are no longer enough," says Caitlin Bolnick Rellas, general partner at CRV. "We believe banking technology has reached that moment. Randy has repeatedly identified foundational shifts before the broader market, and we're excited to back him for a second time as Maximum builds what we believe will become the operating system for the next generation of banking." Fernando says Maximum has already attracted strong interest from larger community and regional banks, but has plans to work with banks of all sizes over time.

Maximum Emerges From Stealth With $30 Million to Build AI Banking OS | PYMNTS.com

Maximum Founder Randy Fernando previously founded the FinTech companies Vault and Power and sold Vault to Acorns in 2017 and Power to Marqeta in 2023, the company said in a Monday press release. At the time of the acquisitions, PYMNTS described Vault as a developer of retirement fund investment services, and Power as a card management platform. Operators who helped build Fernando's previous companies make up the team at Maximum, and investors who funded those earlier ventures are backing the new company, according to the release. "The advancement of AI is creating a paradigm shift in financial services, and banks can't keep pace by relying on legacy providers," Fernando said in the release. "Maximum will provide banks with ultimate control, powerful agentic capabilities and the tools to innovate, enabling them to deliver exceptional new experiences to their customers and partners." Maximum has developed a platform that is powered by AI at a foundational level, which enables banks to build and deploy custom agents, gain real-time visibility into customer activity, deliver innovative financial products and better manage risk at a time when AI is exposing new vulnerabilities to the banking industry, according to the release. Maximum plans to work with banks of all sizes, the release said. With the new funding, Maximum will accelerate product development, expand its engineering and operations teams, and support bank implementations with its existing customers, per the release. Maximum's seed round was led by CRV. Caitlin Bolnick Rellas, general partner at CRV, said in the release that banking technology has reached a point at which incremental improvements are no longer enough. "Randy has repeatedly identified foundational shifts before the broader market, and we're excited to back him for a second time as Maximum builds what we believe will become the operating system for the next generation of banking," Bolnick Rellas said. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "Financial Services Pull Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race" found that financial services firms are "going all in on AI" and have deeply embedded the technology into tasks such as revenue recognition, credit scoring and sales forecasting.