Middesk CEO Kyle Mack on AI, Good Data, and Business Onboarding in 2026

What happens when you try to build AI-driven fintech products on top of messy, incomplete, or unreliable data?In this episode of Fintech Layer Cake, host Reggie Young sits down with Kyle Mack, CEO of Middesk, to unpack why data—not AI—is the real bottleneck holding fintech innovation back. Kyle explains how KYB has evolved far beyond a compliance checkbox, why poor data foundations can amplify risk instead of reducing it, and what it actually takes to support real-time, automated decisioning for business onboarding. The conversation dives into agentic workflows, performance constraints, first-party data strategies, and why trust and explainability still matter in a regulated world. Kyle also reframes business verification as revenue infrastructure, not just risk management, and shares why identity should be thought of as a “rail” connecting businesses, banks, and governments.