Pipe Acquires Glean.ai: Revolutionizing Small Business Finance with AI-Powered Spend Management

Pipe acquires Glean.ai to add spend management to embedded banking toolkit

This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. 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 an ideal 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 world-class Glean.ai team to integrate it within Pipe's internal processes and build an even 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. "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," said Luke Voiles, CEO, Pipe. "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 seasoned fintech executive, brings extensive industry experience and has long shared a vision with Voiles for transforming business finance. "I am incredibly excited to join forces with Luke Voiles and the team at Pipe," said Howard Katzenberg, CEO, Glean.ai. "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.

Pipe Acquires Glean.ai to Add Spend Management to Suite of Embedded Financial Solutions

Enter your email to get Benzinga's ultimate morning update: The PreMarket Activity Newsletter SAN FRANCISCO, April 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pipe, a fintech company enabling embedded financial solutions for software platforms, today announced its strategic acquisition of Glean.ai, a leading 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 an ideal 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 world-class Glean.ai team to integrate it within Pipe's internal processes and build an even 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. "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," said Luke Voiles, CEO, Pipe. "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 seasoned fintech executive, brings extensive industry experience and has long shared a vision with Voiles for transforming business finance. "I am incredibly excited to join forces with Luke Voiles and the team at Pipe," said Howard Katzenberg, CEO, Glean.ai. "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. About Pipe Pipe makes customer-friendly capital and smart financial tools accessible to growing businesses inside the software they use every day. Our embedded solutions are built to scale and give business builders across industries the power to grow on their own terms. To learn more, visit www.pipe.com or follow us on X @pipe. About Glean Glean.ai is a leading provider of AI-powered spend intelligence and bill pay solutions, dedicated to transforming finance operations through intelligent automation and spend insights. Glean.ai empowers entrepreneurs to drive material savings by identifying spend anomalies, billing errors, and savings opportunities. Media Contact Merrill Freund merrill@freundpr.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Pipe Acquires Glean.ai to Add Spend Management Solutions for Small Businesses | PYMNTS.com

Pipe has brought together embedded capital and spend management solutions for small businesses by acquiring Glean.ai. This acquisition adds Glean.ai's artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spend management offering to Pipe's embedded financial solutions for software platforms that serve small businesses, Pipe said in a Tuesday (April 15) press release. "With seamless access to capital and smarter spend insights, we're enabling sustainable growth, better operational oversight and long-term success for small businesses," Pipe CEO Luke Voiles said in the release. Glean.ai's spend management solution provides small businesses with one-click access to spending trends, billing errors and savings opportunities, according to the release. It also offers real-time, cross-functional budgeting and bill pay tools and, with the help of AI, helps business owners make timely, data-driven decisions. This solution complements Pipe's embedded capital and business charge card solution that is delivered to small businesses through the company's payments and vertical software partners, the release said. While the Glean.ai product is being integrated into Pipe's internal processes, it will continue to be available directly from Glean.ai, per the release. Glean.ai founder and CEO Howard Katzenberg, who will join Pipe, said in the release that the combination 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," Katzenberg said. Pipe's sweet spot lies with small businesses that see sales of $100,000 to about $1 million on an annualized basis, Voiles told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an interview posted in October. In an earlier interview, posted in June, Voiles said that by embedding financing solutions into the point-of-sale (POS) systems and software platforms that business owners rely on to run their daily operations, FinTechs like Pipe can connect small businesses with innovative capital and lending products that would have otherwise remained unattainable. "It's a powerful thing to give someone that has never had access to capital, but has an amazing small business ... It can be a huge multiplier," Voiles said. Voiles added that Pipe is developing a broader suite of financial services. "What you can do is offer secondary features where capital becomes this security blanket for businesses that's within the software they use every day," Voiles said.