About Figure
Figure was founded in 2018 by Mike Cagney, who had previously founded and served as CEO of SoFi before departing that company, along with June Ou, applying blockchain technology to residential mortgage and home equity lending, an industry the founders argued was burdened by slow, paper-intensive, and highly manual loan origination, verification, and securitization processes that blockchain-based record-keeping and smart contracts could use digital workflows and blockchain-based infrastructure in certain lending and capital-markets processes.. Figure's most prominent consumer-facing product has been its home equity line of credit (HELOC), which the company markets as able to close and fund significantly faster than traditional HELOCs from banks, which can often take weeks, by using more automated underwriting and verification processes.
Beyond its direct consumer lending products, Figure has built out Provenance Blockchain, a blockchain network the company developed specifically for financial services use cases such as loan origination, securitization, and trading of financial assets, with the broader ambition of making blockchain-based infrastructure for financial asset origination and trading a meaningful alternative to traditional, more manually intensive capital markets infrastructure and processes. The company has pursued partnerships with various financial institutions and asset managers interested in using its blockchain infrastructure for loan securitization and trading, positioning Figure as both a direct consumer lender and infrastructure provider for other financial institutions wanting to use similar blockchain-based technology. Figure has raised very substantial venture funding from investors including Ribbit Capital, DST Global, and Morgan Creek Digital, reaching a valuation exceeding $3 billion, and the company has explored potential paths toward a public listing, though no public offering has been filed or confirmed, reflecting its ambition to be recognized as a significant, maturing fintech and blockchain infrastructure company within both the consumer lending and broader capital markets technology categories.
