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Zach Perret

CEO & Co-Founder, Plaid

Search every verified Zach Perret interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In August 2026, Perret announced a partnership between Plaid and Sierra to jointly build AI agents for financial services, a concept he described as "self-driving money." He said the companies aim to create agents that act on a consumer's behalf to complete financial tasks, such as managing checking account balances. Perret stated that Plaid's infrastructure would enable consumers to interact with their bank accounts through these new agentic experiences. At the Plaid Effects 2026 event, Perret discussed the impact of AI on the financial industry with Ramp CEO Eric Glyman. He stated that the reduced cost of intelligence will allow companies to build more valuable products and services, and he predicted the emergence of a new category of business spending for AI-driven work. Perret expressed optimism about the future, saying, "Abundance is coming. Labor abundance is coming and it's going to be awesome."

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“I believe very soon there is going to be a third category [of spend], which is at marginal costs. You are going to ask models to do work for you of all kinds. And it's not just software engineering, I think it's kind of more like opex in a lot of cases. And I think companies certainly in their five-year plan 5 years ago did not budget for any of this.”

“I think the answer is relatively low. However the error bars on my answer are gigantic. So right now we I mentioned this concept of self-driving money previously. It's this idea that we've thought about for a while which is again if I have a certain amount in my checking account, let's say I have $2,000 in my checking account, I always want to keep at least $2,000 in my checking account, but I never need to keep more”

“We're incredibly excited to announce a partnership between Plaid and Sierra to jointly build a set of agents that can help act on consumers' behalf in financial services. The idea here is we're pushing towards a world of self-driving money, we're pushing towards a world where consumers are going to be able to have agents act on their behalf to complete financial tasks.”

“Some of the fundamentals of our financial system are harder than they need to be. Let's take an example. Let's look at credit scoring. Most people don't understand their credit scores. Or if they do, they'll tell you a story about how the credit score went down because they finally paid off that loan that they've been working so hard to pay off, which seems completely backwards. Consumers don't get it. It doesn't mak”

“We built guaranteed payments, the industry-leading risk solution that takes the guesswork out of bank payments. Plaid guarantees a settlement for every approved transaction. If a payment fails after we've approved it, Plaid covers the loss, not you.”

“Lens score is the next generation credit risk score built on cash flow and behavioral data. It looks at what's actually happening in someone's financial life. Income, spending, cash flow, stability, and how those patterns change over time. No penalties for paying off a mortgage. No weird incentives around closing a credit card. It's designed to reflect actual financial behavior.”

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