Fuse builds an AI loan origination system for credit unions, banks, and other lenders. The New York startup has closed a $25 million Series A led by Footwork, with Primary Venture Partners, NextView Ventures, and Commerce Ventures also backing the round, as it tries to replace the slow, contract-heavy loan software that still runs a lot of consumer lending. Founded in 2020 by Andres Klaric and Marc Escapa, the company spent its first years on an automotive lending startup before pivoting in 2023 toward loan origination infrastructure. That shift matters because the LOS isn’t some side tool. It’s the core operating system behind application intake, underwriting, approval, and disbursement.
What is Fuse’s AI loan origination system?
Fuse’s AI loan origination system is a modern LOS and account-opening stack for lenders that want to replace patchwork workflows with one configurable system. A borrower starts in Fuse’s application portal and submits information through a mobile-friendly flow. They can move between online and branch channels without starting over. On the lender side, staff work from a tailored internal agent portal. Business teams get a no-code decision engine and reporting tools. There’s also an integrations marketplace tied to more than 200 external systems.
The more interesting part is the AI layer. Fuse has named agents for different jobs: an AI Loan Officer to guide applicants and an AI Underwriter to recommend and evaluate rules. It also has an AI Funder that auto-processes more than 90% of documentation for fraud and accuracy checks. The AI Configurator explains automation results and suggests new rules based on override behavior. That’s more concrete than the usual “we use AI across the workflow” line startups hide behind.
For credit unions, Fuse bakes account opening and membership into the loan flow itself. That means one application instead of separate portals. Less re-keying. It also means cleaner handoffs when a member starts online and finishes in-branch, or the other way around. Fuse supports direct and indirect lending across consumer and SMB products. Smaller institutions usually don’t want a different tool for every loan type.
What manual work disappears? A lot of the ugly stuff. Fuse pushes automation into document reading and fraud verification. It also handles underwriting logic, contract generation, document validation, and system integrations. The company promises fast deployment terms, including custom integrations built in under 1 month and biweekly automation coaching. That kind of contract-level implementation promise is an aggressive sales move. LOS migrations are usually painful.
Who founded Fuse and why did it pivot in 2023?
The founding story
Fuse was founded in 2020 by Klaric and Escapa, who met 5 years earlier as classmates at Harvard Business School. Klaric, a Bolivian native, and Escapa, a Spanish immigrant, originally spent 3 years building an automotive lending startup. In 2023, they decided the bigger opportunity wasn’t another lending product at the edge of the stack. It was the stack itself. So they pivoted into the LOS, the system lenders rely on as their source of record.
Why these founders make sense here
Klaric’s background is unusually finance-heavy for a founder selling infrastructure into lenders. Before Fuse, he worked on Wall Street and in investing roles tied to tech and business services, with stops at Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Crescent Capital Group, and H.I.G. Capital. That matters because selling core lending software isn’t just a product problem. It’s also a credibility problem. Buyers want founders who understand credit, operations, and risk.
Escapa brings the operator side. He leads technology and innovation at Fuse and came in as a second-time founder. Before this, he co-founded travel startup Noken, which raised $7 million from Bessemer and Primary, and earlier worked at Turo on growth marketing with a $1.7 million annual budget. He also spent time at McKinsey. Put those résumés together and you get a specific founder-market fit: one co-founder with deep finance exposure, the other with startup product and scaling experience.
Traction, funding, and the rescue fund
The early signals are real. Fuse has more than 100 customers. Now it has $25 million in fresh Series A capital, with Footwork leading and Primary Venture Partners, NextView Ventures, and Commerce Ventures participating.
Fuse is also doing something pretty blunt to win over credit unions: it has set aside a $5 million “rescue fund” to give the first 50 qualifying institutions free access to Fuse until their current legacy contracts expire. Klaric says, “it’s not just a marketing gimmick,” arguing that a lot of credit unions simply can’t afford to break old LOS contracts early.
How Fuse is positioning against incumbents and newer rivals
The incumbent targets are clear: nCino and MeridianLink. Both already sell cloud-based consumer lending and origination software to banks and credit unions, and both pitch streamlined workflows, automation, and digital borrower experiences. Fuse isn’t inventing the category. It’s trying to win by saying legacy platforms are too slow to implement and too rigid to configure. They’re also too expensive to switch into or out of.
Then there are newer challengers. Casca is building an AI-native loan origination platform for SBA lenders and FDIC-insured banks, with deep SBA workflow features like E-Tran integration, and it raised $29 million in 2025. Glide, meanwhile, leans hard into mobile-first account opening and loan origination for credit unions and banks, including a 2-minute application flow. Fuse’s answer is breadth: one platform across consumer, SMB, indirect lending, and account opening. It also offers automation, 200+ integrations, membership built into lending flows, and implementation guarantees written into the contract.
Why does this AI loan origination system funding round matter?
This round matters because Fuse isn’t selling a nice-to-have workflow layer. It’s going after the software category lenders are least eager to replace. Nikhil Basu Trivedi, co-founder and general partner at Footwork, told TechCrunch he backed Fuse because there are more than 4,000 credit unions in the U.S. and their technology is badly overdue for an overhaul. He also compared the LOS to an ERP or CRM: mission-critical, deeply embedded, and historically painful to swap.
That’s why the rescue fund is clever. The biggest blocker to adoption often isn’t product quality. It’s timing. Credit unions get trapped in long contracts, and even when leadership wants newer AI tools, ripping out the core system midstream can be financially dumb. Fuse is trying to buy its way through that bottleneck. Not with discounts alone, but by carrying some of the switching pain itself.
There’s a second signal here. Investors aren’t just betting that lenders want AI. They’re betting lenders want AI wrapped inside a system they can deploy. That’s a more mature thesis. Fancy copilots are easy to demo. Replacing operational plumbing is hard. If Fuse can do that faster than legacy vendors, this round will look smart. If it can’t, $25 million disappears fast.
How big is the digital lending and loan origination market?
The broader market is big enough to make the bet make sense. Grand View Research pegs the U.S. digital lending platform market at $2.42 billion in 2024 and projects it will reach $9.58 billion by 2030, which implies a 26.3% CAGR from 2025 through 2030. That’s fast growth by normal B2B software standards.
Global figures tell a similar story, even if the growth assumptions are a bit less aggressive. IMARC values the worldwide digital lending platform market at $13.0 billion in 2024 and forecasts $39.8 billion by 2033. It says loan origination is the largest product segment inside that market, which lines up with where startups like Fuse, Casca, and Glide are aiming.
Why now? Because lenders finally have enough pressure from both sides. Consumers expect fast, app-like borrowing. Regulators and risk teams still expect tight controls and auditability. Financial institutions want automation that cuts operating costs without forcing them into a multi-year IT project. That combination is why LOS software is getting another look after years of being treated like untouchable back-office infrastructure.
Can Fuse become the AI loan origination system credit unions want?
Fuse is going after one of the hardest software categories in fintech, which is why this story is interesting. An AI loan origination system sounds flashy, but the real test is less glamorous: implementation speed, contract conversions, and whether credit unions trust the company enough to move core workflows onto it. Watch the rescue fund. Watch customer wins against MeridianLink and nCino. Watch whether Fuse can turn “AI-native” from a pitch into a real migration wave.
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FAQ
What funding did Fuse raise?
Fuse raised a $25 million Series A. Footwork led the round, and Primary Venture Partners, NextView Ventures, and Commerce Ventures also participated. The financing comes as Fuse tries to sell its platform to credit unions and other lenders that are still running older loan origination systems.
How does Fuse’s AI loan origination system work?
It combines borrower intake, internal lender workflows, decisioning, integrations, and account opening into one platform. Borrowers use a mobile-friendly application flow. Staff work inside a configurable agent portal. AI agents help with application guidance, underwriting recommendations, document checks, and automation setup. Fuse also supports more than 200 integrations and lets customers move between online and branch channels without restarting the process.
Who are the founders of Fuse?
Fuse was founded in 2020 by Andres Klaric and Marc Escapa, who met at Harvard Business School. Klaric came out of Wall Street and investing roles, while Escapa had already built and sold in startup and product-heavy environments, including Noken, Turo, and McKinsey. That mix helps because selling core lending infrastructure takes both financial credibility and product discipline.
Why is loan origination software attracting so much attention now?
Because the category sits right at the intersection of cost pressure and AI adoption. In the U.S., the digital lending platform market is projected to grow from $2.42 billion in 2024 to $9.58 billion by 2030, and globally the market is forecast to reach $39.8 billion by 2033. Loan origination is the biggest segment inside that shift, which is why investors are backing startups that promise to modernize the lending system of record instead of just layering on a chatbot.
