CE-Ventures, the corporate venture capital platform of UAE based Crescent Enterprises, investments in Plaid and Mesh, two companies building critical infrastructure for the next generation of financial services. CE-Ventures’ participated in the strategic funding rounds of both these companies with the expectation that the future of finance will be open, programmable, and crypto-native.

Silicon Valley startups Plaid and Mesh, focused on data infrastructure and digital asset movement respectively, are both critical enablers of financial interoperability. Plaid’s global fintech data network and Mesh’s global crypto payments network have both been significantly endorsed by their recent fundraising.

For Plaid its $575 million fundraise was led by Franklin Templeton with participation from CE-Ventures alongside Fidelity, BlackRock, NEA, Ribbit Capital, and others. Mesh’s $82 million Series B funding was led by Paradigm with participation from CE-Ventures, Consensys, QuantumLight Capital, Yolo Investments, and others.

“At CE-Ventures we are investing in the financial systems of the future – and we see Plaid and Mesh as foundational platforms in a converging world of fintech and crypto,” said Sudarshan Pareek, Senior Vice President at CE-Ventures. “We are at the beginning of a systemic shift in global finance — from closed systems to open networks, from batch-based processing to real-time programmability, and from siloed fiat rails to interoperable digital assets. Plaid and Mesh are laying the technical infrastructure for that future.”

The company has a history of investing in category-defining infrastructure companies that operate at this intersection. Previous investments include Animoca Brands, Anomali, Layer Zero and others. With investments in Plaid and Mesh, it is positioning itself for the most resilient value to accrue to infrastructure providers that power broad ecosystems rather than single verticals.

Plaid has become the connective tissue for consumer-permissioned financial data, enabling thousands of apps and institutions to securely link bank accounts, verify identities, and power fintech use cases such as lending, payments, and budgeting. As open finance expands globally, Plaid’s infrastructure is becoming indispensable to fintech ecosystems.

In July 2025, MANTL, an Alkami solution team and leading provider of loan and deposit account opening technology, became the first fintech to resell and offer Plaid Layer, Plaid’s instant onboarding technology used by the most innovative neobanks.

Mesh is building a blockchain-native API layer that allows users and platforms to transfer crypto and stablecoins seamlessly across wallets, exchanges, and applications. As digital assets move from speculation to utility, Mesh is creating the middleware infrastructure for the crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto payment economy.

Recently Mesh partnered with UAE and Bahrain regulated crypto broker CoinMENA. Mesh’s API-based solutions will enhance the overall experience for CoinMENA users operating other platforms, with crypto transactions being not only seamless but also more secure. As CoinMENA becomes part of Mesh’s extensive network of integrations, managing crypto across platforms becomes significantly easier for its users.