Forma, which develops employee benefits management software for HR professionals, has raised a $40M Series B led by Ribbit Capital
Anita Ramaswamy / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Forma's $40M Series B lands in an already crowded lane: NYC-based Level raised a $27M Series A for customized benefits plans in April 2021, Chicago-based ThreeFlow pulled in a $45M Series B for broker-facing benefits tools that November, and London-based Origin emerged from stealth with a $21M Series A for HR benefits administration in May 2025. Investors are clearly treating benefits administration as a fundable software category rather than a back-office afterthought.
The lead investor matters too: Ribbit Capital is the same firm reported to be backing Walmart-majority-owned fintech venture One in a $300M+ round, so this check extends a fintech franchise into employer-side benefits infrastructure.
First-order effects
- Forma gains the capital to compete head-to-head with Level and ThreeFlow on product breadth and sales capacity, while Ribbit Capital adds an HR-benefits asset alongside its reported stake in Walmart's One fintech venture.
- HR teams evaluating benefits platforms now have four recently funded options — Forma, Level, ThreeFlow, and Origin — each attacking a different point in the workflow: plan design, broker tooling, and administration.
Second-order effects
- Insurance brokers, ThreeFlow's stated customer base, face pressure as platforms like Forma and Level let employers manage plans directly, threatening the broker's role as intermediary between employers and carriers.
- Payroll-data API providers such as Pinwheel, which raised a $50M Series B in January 2022, stand to gain as benefits platforms need income and employment data feeds to automate enrollment and deductions.
Third-order effects
- If the funding pace holds, benefits administration consolidates around a software layer sitting between employers, brokers, and insurers — shifting distribution power toward whoever owns the employer relationship and the underlying data plumbing.
- Fintech-focused investors like Ribbit blurring into HR software signals that employer benefits is being repositioned as financial infrastructure, drawing capital and competition from payments and banking rather than traditional enterprise SaaS alone.
The trend: Venture capital is building out a dedicated software layer for employee benefits administration, with fintech investors like Ribbit Capital treating employer benefits as financial infrastructure rather than enterprise software.