Deck, a Montreal-based startup describing itself as “the Plaid for the rest of the internet,” has secured $12 million in Series A funding, just nine months after raising its initial seed investment. The round was spearheaded by Infinity Ventures, with participation from Intact Ventures and returning investors Better Tomorrow Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Luge Capital. This latest financing raises Deck’s total funding to date to $16.5 million.
Founded in June 2024 by President Frederick Lavoie, CEO Yves-Gabriel Leboeuf, and CTO Bruno Lambert, Deck is developing software that enables seamless user-permissioned access to web data where traditional APIs are either unavailable or insufficient. Through browser-based automation, Deck’s technology helps users extract structured and usable data from any online service employing login credentials and session-based security.
Deck likens its ambition to that of Plaid, expanding the concept from banking data to encompass the vast majority of web services—including government systems, payroll platforms, utilities portals, and e-commerce backends—which lack open APIs. According to CEO Leboeuf, the company aims to give developers frictionless access to user data that would otherwise require extensive manual work.
“Like Plaid made bank data easy for developers to access with user consent, we want to achieve the same simplicity and efficacy across the 95% of platforms without effective APIs,” Leboeuf explained. Deck achieves this by leveraging AI-driven agents that automate login, navigation, and data extraction processes, simulating human user behavior but at higher speed, scale, and reliability. These processes automatically generate reusable scripts that significantly streamline ongoing use without further AI intervention.
The founding team brings extensive experience in fintech infrastructure. Leboeuf and Lavoie previously co-founded Flinks, dubbed “the Plaid of Canada,” which the National Bank of Canada acquired in 2021 for approximately $140 million. Lambert served as one of Flinks’ earliest engineers.
The inspiration to build Deck derived from widespread frustration among entrepreneurs grappling with data trapped within clunky portals and platforms, from food sales information locked behind distributor websites to music royalties sealed behind uncooperative licensing portals. Recognizing this significant pain point, Deck’s founders envisioned an infrastructure capable of safely unlocking these disparate data sets.
Deck currently focuses extensively on utilities and has successfully integrated more than 100,000 utility providers across 40 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia. Customers already leveraging Deck’s platform include EnergyCAP, Greenly, and Quadient. However, the company also serves other verticals, bringing reliable data extraction tools to industries ranging from accounting and KYC processes to business verification and reporting automation.
Addressing potential concerns, the company stresses that it operates strictly on a user-permissioned basis, fully compliant with standard practices inspired by global open banking movements. Even where terms and conditions might theoretically conflict, Leboeuf asserted, consumer rights to data access and portability represent an internationally recognized trend that increasingly shapes regulatory attitudes worldwide.
The startup has designed sophisticated methods, including vision-based computing and human simulation techniques, to bypass antibot defenses that hinder data extraction technologies. The founders emphasize that while Deck’s technology currently collects data strictly for client use rather than general AI training, a dual-consent model ensures individual and client permissions are always obtained.
Rapid growth in developer adoption is clear, driven largely by the utility and simplicity of Deck’s platform which charges its customers solely based on successful API data calls, ensuring businesses incur charges only when data returns correct and usable results.
With new funding, Deck plans to introduce an advanced data-vertical building tool aimed at enabling developers to quickly establish data access structures tailored for any industry. Currently employing around 30 staff members, Deck intends to build out its team and scale operations further.
Jeremy Jonker, co-founder and managing partner of Infinity Ventures, has joined Deck’s board and believes the company is poised to reshape user-permissioned data access, similar to open banking’s revolutionary impact on financial services.
“Deck offers developers modular reusable solutions with unprecedented flexibility and reliability, extending well beyond utility sectors,” Jonker noted. “It has the clear potential to fundamentally transform data accessibility across every industry.”
