platoseed
← All companies
Palus Finance logo

Palus Finance

Active

40% higher yields on company cash, in under 5 minutes.

Winter 20262 people
Generate ideas β†’
AI insightcan contain mistakes
SMB Treasury ManagementSaaSStartups and SMBs with idle cashHigh competition
Moat
Bond portfolio sourcing; real-time yield optimization; quick bank integration.
Key risk
Interest rate sensitivity; competition from established treasury platforms (Stripe Treasury, Inclisiv); regulatory changes.
Why now
Startup cash hoarding post-2022 downturn; AI enables personalized portfolio optimization.
Competitors
Mercury, Brex, Stripe Treasury, Inclisiv, traditional banking

About

Palus Finance is the first treasury management platform with a higher-yield bond portfolio for companies’ idle cash. We launched in late February and are live with 33 companies, growing 110% week-over-week. Existing startup/SMB treasury products just sweep cash into a money market fund and charge a high management fee. Palus offers a short-duration bond portfolio which safely earns ~40% more yield than money market funds, with sub-3-day liquidity, and 5-minute setup with customers' existing bank accounts. We see treasury as a great wedge to eventually offer full-suite banking services to all high-growth companies. Sam and Michael are technical cofounders who met at Caltech. Sam previously built the AI research platform for a $3T AUM asset manager; Michael built quantum computers for the defense industry.

Founders Β· 2

Sam Lushtak
Sam LushtakFounder and CEO
Goldman SachsCaltech

CEO @ Palus Finance. Used to build treasury strategies for Fortune 500 companies, now I build them for startups. Ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Capital Group. Caltech alum. Sharpe ratio enthusiast.

Michael Gonzalez
Michael GonzalezFounder
Caltech

CTO @ Palus Finance. Distributed systems nerd. Previously wrote monitoring software that saved defense contractors $150M by optimizing uptime of multi-site fleets of quantum computers. Caltech alum.

Related startups

Also in Winter 2026