Founded in 2014 by former Google engineer Paul Taylor, Thought Machine has built Vault, a modern cloud native core system for banks constrained by legacy technology. Over the last months, the company has scaled up international hiring, adding 100 employees in the first two quarters of 2020 across three regions.

The deal with JPMorgan Chase comes off the back of a $125 million equity raise during the course of 2021, with another £150 million raise said to be in the works.

Paul Taylor, CEO and founder of Thought Machine, says: “JPMorgan Chase represents one of the most ambitious, powerful financial institutions in the world - and our joint work signals to the finance industry that cloud native core banking technology is the future for financial services."

The contract represent a major marquee US signing for the UK vendor, which has established a North American HQ in New York. Current clients include Mox, Standard Chartered's greenfield virtual bank in Hong Kong, SEB in Sweden and the UK's Lloyds Banking Group and Atom Bank. The vendor is also understood to have been involved in the roll out of Chase's newly launched digital bank in the UK.

For JPMorgan Chase, the contract represents an opportunity to move away from a legacy, siloed system to a more fluid universal platform in which all banking products operate on a single system in real-time.

Rohan Amin, Chase CIO, comments: “We are excited to be working with Thought Machine - their Vault core engine is built to take full advantage of the cloud and its Smart Contracts framework allows JPMorgan Chase to build on its world-class customer offering and continue to provide its customers with innovative and cutting-edge banking services.”