Hey Nerds 👋,
What happens when a bank with more than 140 million customers takes its playbook to the US?
I sat down with David Vélez, Founder and Global CEO of Nubank, live at Nu Stadium, the day after the US launch, to get into exactly that.
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Nu has conditional approval from the OCC to establish a US national bank and is launching in the US with Lead Bank. Alongside that comes Nu Global, bringing stablecoin-powered accounts to customers across more than 35 countries.
There’s a lot for the Fintech Nerds in this one 👇
🧠 Why David thinks the US is a gigantic opportunity, even with Chime and Cash App already here.
🧠 How Nu’s obsession with efficiency translates into better products and customers who become fanatics.
🧠 What’s under the hood of Nu Global, including Sygnum, Circle, Mastercard, Stripe, and the partners connecting the payment rails.
🧠 How NuFormer, its AI foundation model, is changing credit decisions, and why David is more cautious about customer-facing AI agents.
🧠 What it takes to build a global consumer bank, while there’s still so much room to grow in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.
Nubank’s efficiency stats are GOATed. The kind other bank CEOs read and weep. On my Mt. Rushmore of possible podcast guests, David Vélez is right up there.
If Nubank were not a bank, it would be one of the most interesting technology and AI companies in the world. But it is a bank. A very large Latin American bank.
The question now is whether the company has built something genuinely portable.
I’m endlessly curious about what it takes to build businesses from the inside, and we got to deeper into the weeds than David has in any other conversation.
But what fascinates me is what comes next. Nu built its business on cloud, mobile, and serving customers the incumbents ignored. Now it’s bringing AI and stablecoins into that playbook.
I wanted to understand how much of that advantage travels. Can it win over US consumers? Can Nu Global take it into new markets faster? And what changes when the Founder and Global CEO can build a prototype crypto app in an afternoon?
David gets into all of it.
Enjoy the conversation.
ST.
