An angel investor was so intrigued by this startup, he joined as a co-founder

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This week we’re looking at a startup out to help people navigate long-term care, a flurry of activity in Africa, another fintech company shutdown, and more.

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The big story

Lily Vittayarukskul, Co-founder and CEO — **Image Credits:**Waterlily

Long-term care is not something most people think about until they are older, or until they are forced to. And by then, it is often too late. This topic is personal to me, as I saw both my oldest brother and my mother suffer from illnesses and require long-term care in recent years. Not only is it difficult to find quality care, but it is also extremely expensive — even if you were fortunate enough to purchase some sort of insurance policy. So when I was recently pitched a story on a startup using AI to help people navigate long-term care planning, I was intrigued.

Lily Vittayarukskul started Waterlily in late 2021 after her family was “wiped out” financially by helping care for her aunt who had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. The company uses artificial intelligence to predict a family’s future long-term care needs and costs and then guides them “in building a care plan and figuring out the right way to pay for it.”

Fascinating. I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Vittayarukskul initially started Waterlily as a solo founder until Evan Ehrenberg, a small angel investor, came along. Ehrenberg — who had previously founded and sold Clara Health — helped with early research and was struck by the industry’s response. Curious, he tested the platform and was shocked by his long-term care predictions — so much so that he changed his diet, hired a personal trainer, and updated his financial plans. That experience pulled him in deeper. By 2022, Ehrenberg — who became MIT’s youngest neuroscience PhD — had joined Waterlily as a co-founder.

Dollars and cents

Moove Founders — **Image Credits:**Moove

Uber-backed Moove, an Africa-born mobility fintech that offers vehicle financing to ride-hailing and delivery app drivers across six continents, has acquired Kovi, a Brazilian urban mobility provider. Moove co-founder and co-CEO Ladi Delano told TechCrunch that the deal bumps the mobility fintech’s annual revenue to $275 million. Last March, Moove reported a $115 million ARR.

Formance believes there’s value in offering a modular platform that’s similar to Amazon Web Services’ take on cloud hosting: Customers can use a single service, but it’s more efficient if you house all your cloud infrastructure under the same roof. And it’s just raised $21 million in a round co-led by PayPal Ventures and Portage.

French embedded banking startup Swan has raised another €42 million (around $44 million at current exchange rates). The company considers this round to be the second part of the Series B that was originally announced in September 2023.

Cedar Money recently closed $9.9 million in seed funding led by QED Investors. Like many cross-border payment platforms using stablecoins, Cedar Money acts as a bridge. It launched in early 2024, starting operations in Nigeria.

Guinea-based fintech Cauridor recently raised $3.5 million in seed funding to continue building its payment rails that let merchants, banks, telecom operators, and money transfer companies move funds in and out of Africa.

What else we’re writing

A laptop keyboard and Wise on App Store displayed on a phone screen. — **Image Credits:**Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has hit U.K.-based remittance company Wise with an approximately $2 million fine for what it described as “a series of illegal actions.”

Cushion, a fintech startup that described itself as the “Plaid for buy now, pay later (BNPL),” has shut down. Founder and CEO Paul Kesserwani said that “despite bringing multiple new fintech products to market,” Cushion “didn’t reach the scale needed to sustain the business.”

Elon Musk-owned social network X announced a partnership with Visa to handle person-to-person payments for its upcoming X Money product.

With its 700,000 customers, Alan could be considered as a mature company. But the health insurance company that wants to become a digital companion for your health is still growing like a startup.

Serial entrepreneur and former recording artist Victor D. Lombard, also known as DIVINE, announced the launch of a new fintech company for musicians in partnership with RAKIM, one of hip-hop’s most influential emcees.

The rise of stablecoins — now a $205 billion market — is driven by real-world utility, not speculation, particularly in emerging markets where the most compelling use cases unfold. Tage Kene-Okafor does a deep dive.