There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be a Ramp Customer

When Eric Glyman co-founded Ramp in February 2020, he anticipated the usual challenges of launching a startup—long hours, building a team, and marketing an unfamiliar product. What he didn’t foresee was the chaos of a global pandemic just weeks after the company’s debut. A week into operations, half of Ramp’s New York City employees fell ill. Soon after, corporate spending ground to a halt as businesses shut down due to COVID-19 lockdowns.

“There was never anything like it,” Glyman told Forbes. “If you go back 100 years, as long as there were modern credit records, you'd never seen an event where half of businesses were forced by law to shut down and revenues went to zero.”

Despite the turbulent start, Ramp found its footing and today offers corporate credit cards alongside expense management and HR capabilities. The company has integrated AI, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, to automate financial tasks and streamline corporate spending. Rather than using a mix of financial tools, a Chase card for transactions, Expensify for tracking, and separate HR software, Ramp aims to centralize everything into one platform.

Kevin Permenter, a fintech analyst at research firm IDC, believes this integrated approach highlights the weaknesses of traditional financial institutions. “The lack of a full suite of services is a blind spot for some of the large incumbents, the old guard,” he noted.