News & Insights

SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund — a U.S.-focused corporate venture capital fund launched in collaboration with Fin Capital — is pleased to announce its investment in Synctera, a leader in Banking as a Service (BaaS) and embedded finance. The fund co-led a strategic financing along with the National Bank of Canada.

Founded in 2020, Synctera has established itself as a leader by simplifying complexity, improving transparency, and enabling banks and FinTechs to innovate in a compliant and scalable way. Its platform provides everything companies need to build and scale innovative banking products while equipping sponsor banks with tools to manage embedded finance programs securely.

Synctera currently supports customers including BTG Pactual, Mazlo, Float, Alpha Modus Financial Services, and Bolt, and partners with more than 10 financial institutions such as TransPecos Banks, Lincoln Savings Bank, Stearns Bank, Midland States Bank, and Coastal Community Bank.

“We have worked closely with Logan Allin and Fin Capital since they led our Series A back in 2021, and when we learned they were launching a fund alongside SMBC, we were eager to partner with them,” said Peter Hazlehurst, CEO and Co-Founder of Synctera.

“I am pleased to further support Synctera’s mission of powering financial innovation through smart, scalable, and compliant solutions,” added Logan Allin, Founder and Managing Partner at Fin Capital, and Investment Committee Member of SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund. “The company meaningfully scaled metrics again in 2025 while expanding channel partnerships, launching new credit products, and extending its flexible ledger offerings to community banks through branded core deployments.”

About SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund
The SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund invests in companies from seed through expansion stages across the United States, serving as a strategic partner by leveraging deep industry expertise, regulatory insight, and a global network to help accelerate their growth.

About Synctera
Synctera is a banking and payments platform powering financial innovation. It provides companies with everything they need to build and scale innovative banking products and equips sponsor banks with the tools they need to manage compliant embedded finance programs.

SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund — a U.S.-focused corporate venture capital fund launched in collaboration with Fin Capital — is pleased to announce its participation in WitnessAI’s $58 million funding round, marking the fund’s first investment.

WitnessAI is an emerging leader in AI security and governance for enterprises. The company offers a comprehensive, purpose built platform to secure enterprise AI usage—protecting sensitive information, governing prompts and outputs, ensuring regulatory compliance, and enabling transparency and control without slowing innovation. By providing deep visibility and intelligent oversight across AI interactions, WitnessAI enables organizations to scale AI adoption with confidence.

As generative AI becomes embedded in mission critical workflows, AI security has evolved from a forward-looking consideration into an immediate operational priority.

The financial services industry stands to benefit significantly from secure and well-governed AI deployment, given the sensitivity of customer and transaction data, the complexity of regulatory obligations, and the industry’s increasing reliance on AI-enabled operations. Robust AI security is foundational to maintaining trust while unlocking the full potential of next-generation financial services.

As a corporate venture capital fund backed by global financial leaders SMBC and Fin Capital, SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund views AI security as a domain of both strategic importance and substantial societal relevance. We are excited to partner with WitnessAI as they work to establish a trusted, enterprise-grade foundation for responsible AI adoption, and we look forward to collaborating to shape the future of secure, compliant, and sustainable enterprise AI.

About WitnessAI
WitnessAI is a unified AI security and governance platform trusted by enterprises to govern and protect all AI activity. The platform delivers comprehensive, network-level visibility into AI interactions involving both employees and autonomous agents, including usage within native applications where traditional tools lack coverage. Unlike security that relies on outdated keywords, WitnessAI enables intelligent policies that mitigate emerging threats such as prompt injection while empowering productivity. Built on an enterprise-first, single-tenant architecture, the platform ensures data sovereignty and compliance, transforming AI security from a constraint into a strategic enabler.

Official Press Release: WitnessAI Raises $58 Million for Global Expansion and Announces New Ways to Secure AI Agents

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation ("SMBC", President and CEO: Akihiro Fukutome) is pleased to announce the establishment of "SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund" in collaboration with Fin Capital (Founder & Managing Partner: Logan Allin), marking the commencement of corporate venture capital ("CVC") activities to invest in U.S financial technology startups.

Establishment of SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, a Corporate VentureCapital Fund.pdf