About PlayU

Operators building
the payment AI stack.

PlayU was founded by a small team of payments engineers, risk analysts, and AI researchers who kept meeting the same problem: production systems that couldn't reason. We built the runtime we wished existed.

Meet the team → Talk to us
01 — Our Story

Founded to close the gap.

Between fraud models that couldn't act and ops teams drowning in alerts.

2023
Founded in New York
62
Employees across 3 offices
$54M
Raised · Series B
40+
Financial institutions live
02 — What We Believe

Three principles, non-negotiable.

Every product decision passes these three tests before it ships.

01 — Precision

Right decisions,
measured.

Every agent ships with a golden set. If we can't measure it, we don't deploy it. Ambiguity is a bug.

02 — Autonomy

A dial,
not a switch.

Autonomy is calibrated per action, per customer, per risk tier. Humans stay in the loop where it matters.

03 — Governance

Auditable
by design.

Every decision is logged, reversible, and traceable to the model, prompt, and policy that produced it.

03 — Milestones

Three years, in phases.

From an idea in a Brooklyn kitchen to production at tier-1 acquirers.

2023 — SEED

Founded

Three co-founders, $6M seed led by Ribbit Capital.

2024 — LAUNCH

First Agent

Fraud triage agent shipped to Meridian Payments in production.

2025 — SERIES A

Scale

$18M Series A. Ledger product launched. 22 FIs live.

2026 — SERIES B

Global

$54M Series B. Offices in London and Singapore. 40+ FIs live.

04 — Leadership

The people running PlayU.

Operators from Stripe, Anthropic, JPM, and FinCEN.

SN
Sasha Nakamura
Co-founder & CEO

Ex-Stripe Radar · 12y payments

DR
Diego Reyes
Co-founder & CTO

Ex-Anthropic · Ex-DeepMind

AK
Amara Kensington
Head of Ledger

Ex-Modern Treasury · Ex-JPM

LT
Lin Tao
Head of Compliance

Ex-FinCEN · CAMS certified

05 — Backed By

Investors who know payments.

Four rounds. Four partners still on the cap table.

RC
Ribbit Capital
Lead · Seed

$6M · 2023

IN
Index Ventures
Lead · Series A

$18M · 2025

GV
GV
Lead · Series B

$54M · 2026

SV
Sequoia
Participant · A / B

Multi-round

06 — FAQ

What people ask about PlayU.

Beyond the pitch deck.

Are you hiring?
Yes — engineering, risk research, and applied AI. See the roles page or email careers@playu.ai.
Where are your offices?
New York (HQ), London, and Singapore. Roughly half the team is remote across US and EU time zones.
How do you think about model risk?
We run a formal model risk management framework aligned to SR 11-7 and NYDFS Part 500 — including inventory, validation, and challenger models.

Want to work with us — or for us?

Both paths start with a conversation.

Get in touch →