The recent rise in Fashion x Tech funding reflects a current trend in the fashion industry. To understand the dynamics at work, we must trace back the retail clothing market to its root: the fashion houses and media conglomerates themselves. The major players in the industry always gather on the first Monday of May at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Known as the “party of the year”, the Met Gala is a yearly celebrity-studded gathering to commemorate the opening of each season’s Costume Institute exhibition. …

In his latest annual shareholders letter, Jamie Dimon of J.P.Morgan warned investors that “Silicon Valley is coming”. He’s not mistaken, as Accenture reports that FinTech investment has quadrupled in the past year to reach nearly 12.2 billion dollars today while the entire VC industry in comparison has increased investing by only 63%.

Below is a FinTech sector map featuring startups and companies that I’ve tracked in the past few months:

Many startups, such as Kensho (which can be found in between machine learning, trading and wealth management), fall at the intersection of the broader categories the companies were sorted in.

Here are some of the major trends that I’ve noticed:

• Streamlined payment methods: From Starbucks in NYC to small farmer’s markets in NC, the little plastic Squares attached to iPads seem to be ubiquitous. Cash is dead among millennials, who prefer to Venmo using their mobile phones rather than carry paper bills. And it seems as though every quarter, a new tech giant is adding some type of money transfer feature: Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Snapchat Snapcash, Facebook Messenger Pay, Square $Cashtag. …