Motive Partners (“Motive”), a specialist private investment firm focused exclusively on financial technology and technology-enabled business services, today announced that it has been named to TIME America’s Top Venture Capital Firms 2026, the latest in a series of high-profile recognitions for the firm, its people, platform and companies across the Motive Partners ecosystem.

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The TIME recognition showcases venture capital firms helping shape the next generation of transformative companies, with consideration given to factors including fundraising, deployment, investment performance and hands-on leadership. For Motive, the accolade is particularly significant because Venture is part of an integrated investment platform spanning early-stage Venture through Growth Equity and Buyout, bringing together investors, experienced operators and technology innovators through its proven Investor-Operator-Innovator (IOI) model.

The distinction comes amid a year of growing external recognition. Motive has also been recognized by GrowthCap among its Top Growth Equity Firms and for its private equity platform, and its value-creation capabilities earned Large Cap Deal of the Year recognition from Actum, following the successful $1.8 billion sale of With Intelligence to S&P Global after its transformation into a scaled, technology-enabled private markets data and analytics platform. In addition, members of Motive’s next generation of investment leadership have also earned recognition from GrowthCap, Financial News and Private Equity International, reflecting the depth of talent developing across the firm.

“This recognition from TIME is meaningful because Venture is an essential part of the ecosystem we have been building at Motive,” said Rob Heyvaert, Founder and Managing Partner of Motive Partners. “We founded Motive around a simple conviction: financial technology is too important, too complex and moving too quickly to approach as a generalist. You need investors who understand capital, operators who have run these businesses, and innovators who understand how technology is changing them. When you bring those capabilities together from Venture through Growth and Buyout, you create something much more powerful than any one strategy on its own.”

One sector. The full company lifecycle.

Motive’s differentiated model begins with focus. Financial technology benefits from durable structural tailwinds as technology reshapes banking and payments, capital markets, insurance, wealth and asset management, data and analytics, and technology-enabled business services. This deeply interconnected ecosystem creates significant potential to build, scale and transform companies through technology and operational improvement – and requires specialized knowledge spanning technology, operations, regulation and complex customer markets. Motive was specifically built for this opportunity.

Today, Motive’s integrated global investment platform spans Venture, Growth Equity and Buyout, supported by experienced Founding and Industry Partners and Create, its in-house innovation and technology capability. Together, this combined platform allows Motive to identify emerging technologies early, apply those insights across later-stage companies, and partner with management teams to support growth and long-term value creation.

“The advantage of an integrated platform is that learning moves in both directions,” said Scott Kauffman, Founding Partner and Head of Investments at Motive Partners. “Our Venture team can see technologies, business models and founder behavior at their earliest point of emergence. Those signals inform how we think about Growth and Buyout. At the same time, decades of operating experience across larger financial institutions and scaled businesses give our Venture companies access to a level of domain knowledge and connectivity that is difficult to replicate. That combination – specialization, pattern recognition and execution capability across the lifecycle – is central to how we invest.”

This connectivity is particularly important as artificial intelligence reshapes financial services. Over the past two years, every new investment made through Motive’s Venture strategy has been in an AI-native business, providing early visibility into emerging capabilities that can be shared across the broader portfolio.

Venture as an innovation engine for the broader platform

Led by Ramin Niroumand, Partner, Investments and Head of Venture, Motive’s Venture strategy combines founder and early-stage investor perspectives with the capabilities of an institutional private investment platform. Venture portfolio companies can draw on Motive’s global financial-services ecosystem, operating partners and Create for support across strategy, technology, strategic introductions, talent, fundraising and scaling. In turn, early-stage innovation can inform investment and value-creation decisions across Motive’s Growth and Buyout portfolios.

“Venture is where you can often see the future of the industry first,” said Niroumand. “Our opportunity is not simply to identify great founders early. It is to connect what we learn from them to an integrated platform with deep operating expertise, customer relationships and the ability to support businesses as they scale. Founders get more than an investor, and the broader Motive ecosystem gets a real-time view into where financial technology is heading. That is an incredibly powerful flywheel.”

Recognition extending across the Motive ecosystem

The momentum has extended beyond the boundaries of the firm and to the broader Motive ecosystem, as Motive portfolio companies continue to garner leadership recognition in their respective subsectors. Together, these accolades, among others, underscore the breadth of innovation across the Motive ecosystem, from early-stage businesses creating new technology categories to scaled companies transforming established areas of global financial services, while reinforcing Motive’s conviction in the opportunity across financial technology.

A destination for experienced operators and entrepreneurial leaders

Motive’s momentum is also reflected in the caliber of leaders choosing to join the firm. During 2026, Motive has expanded its bench of Industry Partners, advisors and senior leaders across global financial services, technology, capital markets, digital assets and enterprise transformation.

Among those additions is Jennifer Nason, who joined as an Industry Partner following a nearly four-decade career at J.P. Morgan, most recently as Global Chair of Investment Banking. She joins Umesh Subramanian, former Chief Technology Officer of Citadel and former Goldman Sachs Partner; former Credit Suisse Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Körner; Barclays Investment Banking Chairman Paul Compton; former Citi Global Head of Strategy Tim Karpoff; Renée Berman, a digital-assets and capital-markets leader who joined as an Industry Advisor; and Laurent Caraffa, who joined as an Industry Partner.

These appointments reinforce a talent model cultivated since Motive’s founding: pairing investment professionals with seasoned operators, technologists, entrepreneurs and strategic advisors. That breadth is integral to the IOI model, giving portfolio companies access to leaders who have built, operated, advised and transformed businesses across financial services at critical moments of growth, innovation and change.

Built for the future of financial technology

Motive’s investment thesis is grounded in the belief that specialization becomes more valuable as markets become more complex. Its investors understand how capital is deployed; its operators understand how financial institutions and technology businesses work; and its innovators understand how AI, software, data and modern engineering can transform them. Together, they form the IOI model: investing, operating and innovating under one roof – a platform designed not simply to participate in the evolution of financial technology, but to help form it.

“Financial technology has always been about more than a category of investment,” Heyvaert added. “It is infrastructure for the global economy. We believe the firms that understand that ecosystem most deeply – and can combine investment judgment with operating and technological expertise – will be best positioned to help build its future. The recognition we have received this year is energizing, but what matters most is what it says about the people, companies and platform we are building together.”

About Motive Partners

Motive Partners is a private investment firm exclusively focused on financial technology and technology-enabled business services companies, investing from early-stage ventures to growth equity and buyout in North America and Europe. The firm invests across five subsectors: banking & payments, capital markets, data & analytics, insurance, and wealth and asset management. Motive Partners applies its proven investor, operator, innovator (IOI) model across its portfolio, combining deep financial technology expertise and proven operational rigor to accelerate growth and value creation. With offices in New York, London, and Berlin, the firm provides differentiated insight, connectivity, and capabilities to create long-term value in financial technology companies. More information on Motive Partners can be found at www.motivepartners.com.

Motive Partners is a specialist private equity firm focused on technology-enabled businesses in financial services. Motive Capital Management LLC is a registered investment adviser with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It is not authorized or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy interests in any Motive managed investment vehicle. Directed at professional investors only where applicable. Award and ranking references herein (including TIME America’s Top Venture Capital Firms 2026, GrowthCap Top Growth Equity Firms, Actum Large Cap Deal of the Year, and recognitions from Financial News and Private Equity International) reflect assessments by independent third parties based on their own stated criteria and measurement periods as of the applicable publication date. Motive did not pay a fee to any ranking organization to be considered for or to promote inclusion in these rankings, except where otherwise disclosed. Rankings are not indicative of future results or of the experience of any investor. The referenced $1.8 billion transaction value for the sale of With Intelligence to S&P Global is based on the S&P Global press release announcing the transaction.

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