Capitol One statement: https://investor.capitalone.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
Brex statement: https://www.brex.com/journal/brex-and-capital-one-join-force...
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Comments
By CatsOnHats 2026-01-236:373 reply Brex literally came to us one day in 2022, and notified us that "We have 6 weeks to move everything off their service" they told us boldly they are refocusing on the enterprise market and we were only a "SMB". The guy who literally told us this framed it as a good thing for us like it was some sort of weird break up.
At the time we had signed a large enterprise agreement not long before that, and we even were advertised as a enterprise customer testimonial. When we mentioned that he said it was final. They ghosted us apparently and from what i heard a bunch of companies were the same somehow no longer acceptable for their services. I had a friend who worked for a very large F500 company who also got a similar treatment.
Ironically i had a friend a tiny crypto startup that somehow was allowed to stay despite not meeting their requirements.
By disillusioned 2026-01-236:521 reply That's weird. I remember the great SMB cleavering, where they spiked anyone that was, say, a small brick & mortar, preferring to focus on firms that were more pure tech and higher average balances. I've banked with Brex for, I don't know, 5 or 6 years now, and somehow dodged that, but it was concerning at the time since migrating operating accounts is an enormous pain in my ass.
This was made a bit more annoying when they lost their magical single operating cash sweep account and forced you to split to a separate Treasury account in order to earn interest. Even with auto balance shifting rules, I've had a few transactions fail because of bad timing. (And ACH is scheduled at the same time an intra-bank transfer is scheduled, but the ACH processes overnight and intra-bank has to wait until market open.) Super obnoxious.
By gotem 2026-01-237:19 Yeah it's actually been quite horrific how many (albeit rare but severe) payroll payments, rent payments, or large scheduled vendor payments we were a day late on because of the moronically dumb transfer rules. We also had minimum balance enforcement and even then it would often somehow magically screw up.
Or having to double login to Brex to first do a transfer from treasury and then wait hours to then login and schedule the ACH.
Anyways will never use Brex again after all that annoyance.
By DANmode 2026-01-2314:44 I bet it’s not ironic at all if you take a peek at the ownership and investors of the two firms.
By realaaa 2026-01-252:27 same story as always I guess? start with obsession with customers, no size is too small !
nek minute - focus on Enterprise, dawg eat dawg :)
Brex rejected my application to open a bank account in 3 different occasion. mercury.com provided me the B2B account within the day and the product and UX is awesome.
By artembugara 2026-01-2310:14 +1 for Mercury.
Another good thing about Mercury is that in case you’re stuck/not being treated fairly, you can just email/publicly mention Immad (CEO) and he’ll reply within minutes and will look into this
By tschellenbach 2026-01-2222:161 reply Feels like they were first in the space but then somehow Ramp ran away from dev with a higher dev pace. Fascinating to see.
Personally I'm okay with being outcompeted if their's a billion dollar payout at the end.
By throwup238 2026-01-237:191 reply Everything that's wrong with venture capitalism condensed into a single fifteen word sentence. Bravo.
If you can't provide a billion dollars worth of value, extract a billion dollars worth of grift!
I hear A16Z is hiring.
How is being outcompeted “grift”? I feel like I’m missing some context here.
By DSingularity 2026-01-238:251 reply Why do you start a startup? Is it to build an idea you believe in and believe it is potentially lucrative or is it so you can go through the motions, say the trendy things, and get outcompeted because in the end you are primarily focused on getting acquired with a 1B exit?
Spoken like someone who has never started a business. Brex raised much less than $5b and Capital One apparently thinks it is worth more than that (otherwise they wouldn’t buy it).
This is called value creation.
I think the investors who put $300m in at a $12b valuation would disagree
By qeternity 2026-01-2320:58 I don’t think you understand how liquidation preferences work.
They will get $300m back.
Opportunity cost sure. But zero nominal loss.
Definitely. No company has ever overpaid for another company. No fraud or FOMO-driven overvaluation has ever occurred in an acquisition. And all acquisitions have always turned out for the best. It's all 100% pure value creation.
By solarkraft 2026-01-2311:223 reply Your statement is true on average because the world’s economy is continuing to function.
By komali2 2026-01-2415:51 > Your statement is true on average because the world’s economy is continuing to function.
The entire field of economics depends on post ipso facto statements like this.
By shafyy 2026-01-2312:47 "functioning" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
Oh wow, I don't even know where to begin with that.
Like, the world economy can't continue to function even if acquisitions were only 80% value creation on average? Or does the entire world economy depend on companies acquiring other companies with 100% value creation on average, such that it continuing to function logically implies 100% average value creation?
By re-thc 2026-01-2315:58 > can't continue to function even if acquisitions were only 80% value creation on average
The number is much much lower than that. Most acquisitions fail or don't have much impact.
By qeternity 2026-01-2321:01 Definitely. And some random guy on HN knows the value of Brex to Capital One better than Capital One does.
Brex can be worth $5b today and also be worth less in the future. These two realities don’t conflict. Acquisitions can and do end poorly. But the vast majority work well. I am not sure what you don’t understand about that?
