Ryan Smith's Utah-based Halo Fund has led a $70 million investment in fintech Flex (San Francisco), highlighting Utah's growing venture capital influence while backing AI-powered private banking for entrepreneurs worldwide.
Sandy, Utah — July 14, 2026
Utah entrepreneur Ryan Smith has made another high-profile venture bet.
Halo Fund, the investment firm Smith co-founded with Accel partner Ryan Sweeney, has led a $70 million funding B1 round for San Francisco fintech Flex, pushing the AI-native private banking company to a $1.2 billion valuation just six months after its previous financing.
The deal underscores Smith's growing influence beyond Utah's startup ecosystem. Since founding Qualtrics and assembling a sports empire that includes ownership of the Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth, Smith has increasingly turned his attention to venture investing through Halo Fund, backing companies that sit at the intersection of technology, artificial intelligence and global scale.
While Halo Fund is closely identified with Smith and Utah, Flex is headquartered in San Francisco, where it was founded in 2023 by CEO Zaid Rahman. The company is building an AI-powered private banking platform for high-net-worth business owners and also maintains a New York office.
Utah-based Halo Fund, launched by Smith and Sweeney in 2025 with offices in Sandy, Utah, and Palo Alto, California, led the $70 million investment. The fund positions itself as more than a traditional venture firm, leveraging Smith's reach across technology, professional sports and entertainment to help portfolio companies accelerate growth.
Flex, headquartered in the Ferry Building overlooking the San Francisco Bay, announced the financing today. Founded in 2023 by CEO Zaid Rahman, Flex is building what it describes as an AI-native private banking platform for high-net-worth business owners. Rather than treating business and personal finances separately, the platform combines banking, payments, credit, expense management, treasury and AI-powered financial tools into a single system designed for entrepreneurs whose businesses operate across multiple countries and currencies.
The company plans to use the capital to expand Flex Global, a platform that allows business owners to move money across more than 100 countries using stablecoin-based payment infrastructure. The company says the service supports banking in 76 countries and 32 currencies, enabling international payments to settle in minutes rather than days.
For Flex, the timing is notable. The company says annualized revenue has tripled since closing a $60 million Series B in December 2025, while annualized payment volume has climbed past $10 billion. In total, the company has now raised $180 million in equity and $300 million in debt financing.
Smith said Flex addresses a longstanding problem facing entrepreneurs.
"I've spent my career helping entrepreneurs win, and they all have the same problem: their business and personal financial lives are completely intertwined, but every bank treats them as two different customers," Smith said in a statement.
For Smith, the deal further expands Halo Fund's portfolio of growth-stage technology companies and underscores Utah's continued influence in venture investing. Since selling Qualtrics and building one of the country's most prominent sports ownership portfolios, Smith has increasingly focused on backing companies that combine artificial intelligence with large, underserved markets.
With Flex now valued at $1.2 billion and targeting global expansion, Halo Fund is betting that private banking for entrepreneurs could become one of fintech's next major growth categories.
Learn more at www.flex.one and halofund.com.
