Vine Financial Secures Seed Funding for AI-Powered Commercial Lending Platform

Vine Financial said Monday (June 16) that it secured seed funding for its commercial lending accelerator platform for banks and credit unions.

The platform brings together all the tools needed by lenders and uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to make commercial lending faster, more accurate and more auditable, the company said in a Monday press release.

With the new funding, Vine will continue its growth and expand the capabilities of its platform to encompass commercial real estate, agriculture and other lending products, according to the release.

Neeraj Vohra, managing partner of the Bankers Helping Bankers Fund, one of Vine’s strategic investors, said in the release: “They’re not just digitizing existing processes, they’re reimagining how commercial lending should work in the digital banking era.”

Vine also finalized its board of directors, which includes founders David Eads and John O’Shaughnessy; Charles Potts, executive vice president of innovation for the Independent Community Bankers of America; Vohra; and Zahid Afzal, a senior banking executive and investor in Vine, per the release.

“We’ve carefully assembled this group of investors and board members for their expertise and shared vision for transforming commercial lending,” Eads said in the release. “Having these industry leaders in our corner gives us an extraordinary advantage as we revolutionize a critical but historically underserved segment of financial services.”

As AI becomes more integrated into banking, the financial sector stands on the brink of a major shift, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and NCR Voyix collaboration, “Is AI the Master Key to Banking’s Next Era?”

The report found that 72% of finance leaders report actively using AI in their operations, with its applications ranging from fraud detection (64%) to customer onboarding automation (42%).

In another, separate product rollout, Zest AI said in May that it introduced a tool to help banks make AI-powered lending decisions. The company’s LuLu Strategy platform offers lenders a deeper understanding of borrower behavior patterns, as well as loan performance monitoring and policy simulations.

In November, IBC Bank launched a partnership with commercial lending FinTech company Finanta, in which the bank would integrate Finanta’s commercial lending platform to accelerate its digital transformation.

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