Rex Salisbury’s Cambrian Ventures Raises New Fund, Bucking Fintech Slowdown

Rex Salisbury, nan solo GP down Cambrian Ventures, fondly recalls nan clip he fell successful emotion pinch fintech.

The twelvemonth was 2015, he had precocious near his occupation arsenic an finance banker to effort his manus connected engineering astatine a owe startup. “That’s erstwhile you had companies for illustration Stripe, Plaid, Credit Karma, Wealthfront starting to scale,” he told TechCrunch. “Lending Club had conscionable done their IPO, and was trading really well.”

Investors’ excitement for fintech grew exponentially successful nan pursuing years, reaching a fever transportation successful 2021. Things calmed down noticeably a twelvemonth later, however, arsenic liking rates rose.

Today, galore deliberation fintech has mislaid its luster, but Salisbury’s enthusiasm for nan class remains arsenic beardown arsenic it did successful 2015. He feels nan celebrated sentiment that astir opportunities successful fintech person been exhausted could not beryllium further from nan truth. “If you’re a master and you cognize wherever to look, you’ll recognize that only 1% of world financial services revenues has been captured by fintech,” he said.

Indeed, Salisbury has been engaged investing successful pre-seed and seed-stage startups from Cambrian’s inaugural $20 cardinal fund.  Of nan 33 companies he has funded, Salisbury claims astir half person already secured Series A funding, considerably higher than nan 15.4% seed-to-Series A graduation complaint tracked by Carta.

These companies see Simple Closures, which helps startups adjacent shop, and Keep, a Canadian in installments paper and payments platform.  

Salisbury credits nan first fund’s capacity pinch his expertise to find beardown founders “who are very bully astatine executing against nan imagination they laic out.”

That early occurrence has now helped Salisbury unafraid a 2nd fund, which, for illustration nan first one, is launching pinch $20 cardinal successful committed capital.

The haul is simply a singular feat for a mini task money for illustration Cambrian: A report by PitchBook showed that fundraising by emerging task managers (defined arsenic firms still moving their first 3 funds) deed a decade debased successful nan first half of 2025.

Salisbury isn’t conscionable different fintech investor, however. Before launching Cambrian Ventures, he was nan founding personnel of Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) fintech practice. And during his respective years astatine nan salient firm, he invested successful a startup called Deel, which would spell connected to go a elephantine successful nan payroll and quality assets devices space.

Prior to joining a16z, Salisbury founded a fintech organization that hosted monthly meetups for founders, builders, and assemblage enthusiasts. He besides launched a newsletter that soared to astir 20,000 subscribers, and runs a Slack group that now boasts complete 1,800 founders.

Thanks to his well-regarded network, Salisbury attracted founders from apical fintech companies for illustration NerdWallet, Plaid, Betterment, and Melio arsenic LPs for his first fund. These individuals returned to put successful his 2nd fund, which besides saw nan summation of respective organization backers, including a slope and a life security firm.

Salisbury says his strategy remains unchanged for Cambrian’s 2nd fund, explaining that he is still focused connected “finding awesome founders who person caller ideas for unsocial products.”

Of course, what’s different now is that startups tin leverage each nan advancements successful AI. “The biggest point AI lets you do is build multi-product companies from time one,” he said.

“AI makes it easier to constitute much codification that does much things,” he explained, pointing to his finance successful Every.  “They do banking, accounting, finance, corp tax, treasury, HR, HSA, FSA, and a fewer different things, each successful one.”