Restive Ventures

Restive Ventures is a pre-seed and seed-stage specialist focused exclusively on financial technology. The firm partners with visionary founders building technology companies that will transform financial services, providing early capital alongside deep operational expertise and a world-class industry network to help founders navigate the complexities of the sector and grow quickly. The team — former fintech founders and senior operators — writes the first institutional check, often pre-incorporation and almost always pre-revenue, then works as an extension of the founding team on hiring, partnerships, regulatory relationships, and introductions to downstream investors. With Fund III ($45M, closed May 2026), Restive has sharpened its thesis around what it calls 'AiFi' — an AI-native financial services ecosystem in which products, teams, workflows, and unit economics are fundamentally different from legacy fintech. The firm believes AI will add roughly $1 trillion in new revenue to financial services over the next decade and intends to back the founders pursuing that opportunity at its earliest, most formative moment — targeting tools that let machines transact and negotiate with each other, systems that automate operations and compliance, and products that turn cost centers into revenue lines.