Figure Technologies, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based fintech cofounded by Mike Cagney, the founder of the more established fintech company SoFi, is raising a whole lot of money — again.
By February of this year, Figure had already raised $120 million in equity funding from a gaggle of investors, including RPM Ventures, partners at DST Global, Ribbit Capital, DCM, DCG, Nimble Ventures, and Morgan Creek. In May, it announced that it had closed an up to $1 billion uncommitted asset-based financing facility on its own custom blockchain from Jefferies and WSFS Institutional Services.
Now, according to paperwork filed with the SEC earlier this month, it appears that Figure has closed or is about to close on $103 million in Series C funding.
Presumably, investors are interested partly in the company’s growing spate of products. While Figure started out providing home loans to older customers who aren’t earning income and have much of their wealth tied up in their homes — a fast-growing demographic — it has more recently begun to chase after a demographic that Cagney knows well through SoFi, which is younger people looking to refinance their student loans.
Figure talked recently with American Banker about the company’s interest in competing more directly with SoFi, citing the $1.4 trillion in outstanding loan debt as the primary reason it’s swooping into the space, and with the “same mousetrap” that Figure has developed to quickly process home loans, which it then securitizes and sells.
Specifically, all of Figure’s financial services business is executed entirely on its blockchain, Provenance, which further has a native token, Hash, that’s used to both access the blockchain and to memorialize off-chain exchange of fiat currency.
Cagney co-founded Figure with his wife, June Ou, who is the company’s chief operating officer. She was previously chief technology officer at SoFi, where Cagney lost his job in 2017 as CEO after a board investigation into sexual misconduct at the company.
Others of Figure’s cofounders include Alana Ackerson and Cynthia Chen. Ackerson was previously the CEO of the Thiel Foundation. Chen was most recently a venture partner with DHVC (Danhua Capital), a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Ca.
According to Figure’s website, it plans to introduce a money market product “soon.” Figure has also talked in the past of expanding into other lines of business, including wealth management, unsecured consumer loans, and checking accounts, all offered through partner banks.
In the meantime, SoFi has similarly been expanding beyond student loan refinancing under the leadership of current CEO Anthony Noto. Earlier this year, for example, SoFi made fractional share buying and exchange-traded funds available to its users. It also launched a mobile-first cash management account.
