FIS Acquires AI-Native OpenCoreOS as Core Banking Consolidation Continues
Banking and payments technology group FIS has acquired OpenCoreOS, the AI-native core banking startup founded by former Zafin chief executive Al Karim Somji, only months after the company was publicly launched.
FIS told The Fintech Times the deal completed in March and that Somji has since joined the company as president of enterprise platforms. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The deal was not announced at the time, although Companies House records put the change of control on 18 March, when Fidelity National Information Services was registered as owning at least 75 per cent of OpenCoreOS UK’s shares and voting rights, as well as having the right to appoint or remove directors. Somji ceased to be a person with significant control on the same day. The board also changed, with all four existing directors stepping down and two new directors appointed.
Bigger core banking providers are increasingly buying newer technology rather than building it themselves, according to analysts, who expect more deals to follow.
Paul Schaus, founder and managing partner of banking consultancy CCG Catalyst, says: “It tells me the large providers have decided it is faster and cheaper to buy innovation than to build it.”
He cites Fiserv’s acquisition of Finxact, FIS’s purchase of Bond and SoFi’s acquisition of Technisys as earlier examples of established financial technology companies buying newer platforms.
On OpenCoreOS, Schaus says: “When a company that is young gets acquired, the buyer is not buying a business, because there was no business yet. FIS bought the technology direction, the team, and time.”
A fast move into FIS
OpenCoreOS was introduced in October 2025 as the “next chapter” in Somji’s work on banking technology, after a period in stealth. The company described OpenCoreOS as an AI-native core modernisation platform and said general availability was planned for the first quarter of 2026.
Somji had already stepped down as chief executive of Zafin after more than two decades leading the banking technology company, while staying on its board. He founded OpenCoreOS with former HSBC global CIO Steve Van Wyk, CTO Slavo Vojacek and chief AI and product officer Ricky Marcon.
At launch, the company said it was working with tier-one design partners. It also said the platform could run across several cloud providers at once, so an outage at one would not take a bank offline.
FIS already runs several core banking systems. It launched Modern Banking Platform in early 2020 as a cloud-native, component-based way for banks to upgrade their core in stages. Buying OpenCoreOS adds another newer-generation platform to that mix.
Schaus notes the timing: “Six years after launching it, FIS went out and bought an AI-native core.”
FIS gave no further detail on why the deal was not announced, whether OpenCoreOS remains a standalone product, how FIS is using the technology or whether any banks were live on the platform when the deal completed. It did confirm Somji’s move into the president of enterprise platforms role, and Schaus thinks that appointment says plenty about the deal.