boston-fintech
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Clarus Capital Put a $100 Million Ceiling on the Machine Room - Then Banks Stepped Back
The Boston lender built a private-credit business around an unfashionable truth: factories, fleets and data centers still need expensive physical things. Its playbook pairs leveraged-credit judgment with equipment expertise - and turns those contracts into repeatable capital-market fuel.
Ark
Ark is a Boston-based software company that builds a cloud platform for running private capital funds. Founded in 2017, it combines fund accounting, an investor portal, LP reporting, and fundraising tools into one system used by venture capital, private equity, fund-of-funds, and real estate managers as well as the fund administrators who service them. By 2026 the platform supported more than 500 GPs and administrators overseeing roughly $185 billion in assets. In July 2026, AngelList acquired Ark to fold its fund-administration software into AngelList's banking, payments, and cap-table infrastructure.
Robert Clare
Robert (Bob) Clare is the founder, CEO and board chairman of Fispoke, a wealth-infrastructure startup he co-founded in 2023 with Nathan Berk. Fispoke gives independent financial advisors a white-labeled private banking layer - cash, credit, securities-based loans and mortgages - traditionally locked inside wirehouses and private banks. A Georgetown MBA, Clare spent years in operating and consulting roles at Bank of America, Cognizant and JDX Consulting before deciding the advisor channel needed banking tools of its own. Fispoke has raised roughly $5.45M and signed partnerships with Broadridge, Bell Bank, Wealthbox and Sage Home Loans.